It Started With A Tuning Fork
by Milo J7
Summary: During a less then routine scouting mission Captain 'Bulldog' Novacek makes an unplotted jump and discovers an object that will change Humanity's view of the galaxy. But when both sides go on the war footing and the Twelve Colonies find themselves hopelessly outmatched will the galaxy be ready for a desperate humanity who will do anything to win?
1. Chapter 1

**Battlestar Valkyrie****, CIC**

The crew was quiet in the CIC and frankly Commander Adama liked it that way. This mission was beyond tricky and he wanted to be able to concentrate. The stealthstar was new, as far as he knew, and it was in the Commander's nature not to trust new equipment until he had seen it proven.

"Valkyrie, Bulldog I am exactly two clicks past the line, repeat two clicks and I have negative DRADIS contacts there's uh nothing here sir" Daniel 'Bulldog' Novacek reported, his nervousness clear in his voice "which is just fine by me, if company wants to go for a joyride through they came to the right driver"

If it were any other pilot Adama probably would have told him to stay off the radio, but in this situation he was willing to let Bulldog have a little comfort.

"DRADIS contact, unknown vessel just jumped in" a Lieutenant Sadio, the Valkyrie's DRADIS operator, reported.

Grabbing the phone that linked directly to the stealthstar Adama quickly ordered "Bulldog go dark"

"Already on it Valkyrie, DRADIS is shut down and engines are baffled"

"Good work bulldog, we'll keep you posted, Valkyrie out" Adama said before he placed the phone back in it's cradle

"Sir, the contact just jumped away" Sadio reported before turning back to his screen

"What do you think Saul" Adama asked his ever loyal XO

"Probably some toaster version of the Raptor. Probably dozens of them, making randomised jumps along the line every few minutes. If one picks our fleet moving across the line, it would probably be gone before any of our ships could destroy it, next thing we know that patrol ship is back and it's brought a Cylon fleet with it" Colonel Tigh replied

"I agree it would be the best strategy for defending the line. Let's a small number of capital ships cover a much larger portion of space" Adama then spoke up "Lieutenant Wisp, bring Bulldog back but tell him to take it slow and stealthy"

"Aye sir" Wisp replied "Bulldog, Valkyrie come on home, repeat come one home but run silent"

Bulldogs voice rang out from the speakers a moment later "Roger Valkyrie, coming home"

As the CIC crew watched on the DRADIS console, the stealthstar began to move back towards the Valkyrie at slow pace, Bulldog was trading speed for stealth. To crew in the CIC though, already on edge and who were used to the lighting speed and manoeuvres of ships like the Viper, it was like watching a snail try to catch up with a hare.

"Contact, Contact. Twenty unidentified vessels, same ships as before though. All within five clicks of Bulldog" Sadio yelled "Sir, they appear to be searching for the stealthstar, they're formed into ten, two ship formations"

"Get Blue squadron ready for launch and prep all our batteries, set condition one throughout the ship" Adama ordered before picking up the phone to the stealthstar as the phone clicked Adama heard the echo of Saul Tigh's voice over the speaker as he relayed the Commander's orders.

"Bulldog, Valkyrie Actual. How's your egress look"

"Not good Actual, with the way these toasters appear to be searching, I'll probably run into one on my way out the door. I think an FTL jump may be in order sir" the Pilot replied, in between words his breath was heavy and Adama wasn't sure but he could have sworn that he heard a slight tremble in Bulldog's speech

**Stealthstar, Cockpit**

"Agreed Bulldog, we'll format a solution and transmit it to you. Just get your ship ready to jump, Valkyrie Actual out"

'Good Fraking Gods, there is no way this could get any worse' Bulldog thought to himself as he started to spin up the FTL drive. Although he'd jumped at the chance to fly the new stealthstar at first, Bulldog had suddenly come to the realisation that he hated being surrounded by enemies and not having anything to shoot with.

Next time the Valkyrie got assigned to a mission like this, he would force the Chief to strap at least two missiles into the stealthstar's internal weapons hold. Otherwise someone else could fly the ship.

Bulldog nearly leapt straight through his canopy when he heard a ping in his helmet a moment later but it was just the stealthstar informing him that the FTL drive was ready to go.

"Valkyrie, Bulldog I'm ready to receive coordinates" the pilot quickly radioed. He was taking a risk, communicating like he had been throughout this mission, but it was a small comfort to hear the Old Man when he was this nervous. No matter what Bulldog knew that if something happened to him, Bill Adama would tear the armistice apart to come and get him out of the Cylon zone.

Glancing up Bulldog caught sight of two of the ships that were hunting him. Currently half a click away, the looked like a crescent moon with a long ovoid through the middle. Tilted on an angle it's silhouette would probably look like the moon and comet emblem of the Marine orbital assault division. What surprised him though was it's size, they appeared to be about the size of a Viper and yet they had FTL capability.

As Bulldog watched the two craft turned towards him and a shrill _deedle deedle deedle_ rang in his helmet.

"Valkyrie, Bulldog. Contacts have missile lock" he reported. At first his hands began to move towards the ejection lever but Bulldog instead placed one of his hands on the FTL jump switch'

**Battlestar Valkyrie, CIC**

"This isn't going to end well" Tigh muttered as soon as Bulldog finished his report

"I know Saul" Adama replied, "Wisp, what's the status of our guns and vipers"

"Blue squadron is ready for launch at your go sir, except for Lieutenant Dualla, his Viper has suffered some kind of engine malfunction" the lieutenant replied, his voice showing traces of excitement "All batteries are online Sir both defensive and offensive"

A moment passed a officers raced around the CIC preparing for possible combat. Half of them were dreading what was about to happen, the others were excited in a minute they might have a chance to live up to the legendary deeds of the previous generation, that had sat in their spots during the Cylon war.

"Valkyrie, Bulldog. Missile inbound, I repeat missile inbound. I'm going for an unplotted jump" the pilots panicked voice rang over the speaker.

"Wisp, get me a line to the stealthstar" Adama ordered, Bulldog had done some crazy things in his time but an unplotted jump was another and a pilot was not going to materialise inside a sun on _his_ watch.

"It's no good sir" Lieutenant Wisp replied solemnly as she pointed at the DRADIS console in the centre of the CIC. Adama looked up to find that the Lieutenant was right, the stealthstar and Bulldog were already gone…

**Stealthstar, Cockpit**

Bulldog was rare in that he was one of only a few people who actually enjoyed FTL jumps and were willing to admit. The combination of nausea and the adrenaline rush it gave him were one of his favourite parts of being in the fleet and seeing as he was currently in a random location, with no contacts on his DRADIS and he had _definitely_ not emerged inside a sun of a planet he revelled in the feeling, spending a good five minutes just laughing with glee as the tension of the past half hour evaporated.

When it had subsided though Bulldog settled into the task of figuring out where he was. The stealthstar was currently locked in a decaying orbit around a bluish-red gas giant with a large ring, something he quickly corrected. He then set the computer to reversing the course that had brought him here, once it was done he would simply adjust the destination by a few clicks and hopefully he would emerge at least half a click from the Valkyrie. On the off chance Adama wasn't there though he would only be about four of five jumps from Aquaria.

Once he had the instructions programmed in Bulldog was dismayed to find that the computed estimated that it would take three hours to assemble the coordinates and unlike what some of Valkyrie's Raptor pilots did, he had no form of entertainment available. Bulldog therefore adjusted his seat for the long wait.

"Well, here I am" he muttered

After ten minutes of waiting though it dawned on him. He was sitting in a ship, a new ship, a ship that he had yet to truly push to it's limits.

Powering up the engines and disengaging the stealth baffles, Bulldog grinned as he felt the roar of the stealthstar's engines and setting up the computer to track his flight so that he could find his jump point, he sent the stealthstar hurtling towards the asteroid ring below his ship.

Although he wouldn't be stupid enough to risk the stealthstar by flying through the ring itself, Bulldog was enough of a risk taker to skirt the edge, dodging the occasional asteroid that strayed slightly outside the main belt. Pushing the stealthstar's engines to their maximum thrust Bulldog raced along, with what someone might describe as an impossibly large grin on his face.

Within an hour the stealthstar had begun nearing the other side of the gas giant and as he passed over the horizon, Bulldog spotted the northern pole of a small mon from his canopy. As he got closer the sensors began to light up, the atmosphere was made up of a mix of nitrogen, oxygen and argon and the current temperature was a chilly 2 degrees Celsius. Still with the right equipment it would probably be liveable.

However while Bulldog was focused on the moon (and his delusions of having a small colony named after him) he didn't notice the far greater object in the area until his DRADIS pinged, bringing his attention to it. Pulling his ship closer towards the object that was caught between the gravity of the moon and the gas giant Bulldog made sure that his gun cams, minus the guns, were filming. The object looked vaguely like a tuning fork, blue and with a series of rings in the centre. It looked like it had been powered down.

Bulldog's first thought was that he had discovered some kind of weapon left over from the war but as he glanced over the odd design that matched nothing he had ever seen, Colonial or Cylon, Bulldog realised that what he had found was _alien. _He, Captain Daniel 'Bulldog' Novacek of the Colonial fleet had just made first contact.

Swinging the stealthstar around and gunning the engines further then what he had during his little "test" Bulldog hightailed it back to where he had originally jumped into this area. He was just a pilot, admittedly a skilled one, but still just a pilot he was neither qualified nor trained to make contact with an alien race. Something like that was best left to the Commander.

If anyone would know what to do, it would be the Old Man.

**Author's Notes  
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Well here I am with my story to tell, before I get into it though I have some things I would like to point out so that there won't be any flame/hate reviews and to cut down on the number of questions.

1-Shepard and co will not be appearing in this fic (although I do have an idea for a sequel to this where they would appear but that is far off in the future).

2-This is going to be the first contact war with a few major differences. The most obvious being that it will feature the 12 Colonies instead of humans from Earth. The Turians are going to get a lot more into this with more ships and soldiers but of course they have less to deal with then in ME cannon.

3-This one may be a bit obvious, but those veteran BSG fans reading this fic will know that the screw up with the stealthstar mission is what landed Bill Adama in command of the Galactica for her decommissioning. Now seeing as the mission has instead branched off into a major success in this fic, you may think that the Admiral will be staying with the Valkyrie but no. I fully intend for Admiral Adama to fight the First Contact War from the CIC of the Galactica.

4-The Cylons will most certainly be making an appearance but not in the way you think.

5-The story of the Final Five Cylons will be present (and will in fact play a major role in the story line eventually) but I'll be changing a few identities around. This has more to do with the fact that I'm throwing all that divine intervention crap out the window and two to three of the final five Cylons on the one ship does not fit in with my plans at all.

So enjoy and review.


	2. Chapter 2

**Picon Fleet Headquarters, 2 Weeks Later**

"Well Bill, your pilot's little discovery has got the politicians who know about it either jumping for joy or running for the bunkers" Fleet Admiral David Nagala told the Commander. Ten years Adama's Junior, when he had joined the fleet, the first thing he been told after 'Those shoes aren't shiny enough recruit' were tales of Bill Adama, the Caprican who made Ace in his first battle. It was actually part of that that led to Nagala signing off on the Adama's and Saul Tigh's reintegration with the fleet.

"What I want to know Sir is how we'll be proceeding from here. Finding alien technology doesn't exactly happen every day"

"No it doesn't happen every day that's why Bill, these are yours" Nagala said as he placed a small box on the desk. Curious Bill opened it to find the two insignia of a rear admiral. While Bill was still surprised Nagala stood up and stuck out his hand "Congratulations _Admiral_ Adama"

"Thank you sir" Admiral Adama replied as he stood and took his commander's hand "But what about Valkyrie sir. Rear Admirals typically don't command baby battlestars"

"That's why Bill you're heading off to take over BSG-75"

"Isn't that just Galactica Sir" Adama asked with a confused look on his face

"Not any more, I've convinced President Adar and the Quorum to let us bring eight battlestar groups back into service in case our first alien contact is less then pleasant, one immediately and the rest over the next two years. You'll have command over a full group, six escortstars, two Valkyries and Galactica until she's decommissioned" Nagala replied with a smug grin on his face. He had painted the worst possible scenario for the politicians, namely that considering the size of the colossal object, how big and powerful would their military be. Eight battlestar groups were rather small to a fleet of 50 such groups, but it was a reverse from the last two decades of cuts and Nagala was willing to take that for now. Of course though, if the alien's military actually _was _hugely big and powerful then he'd cross that bridge when he came to it.

"Hmm, about time the Quorum listened to us but what about after Galactica goes to the boneyard"

"Actually Bill, they're turning her into a museum to the Cylon War but once she's left the fleet you and most of the Galactica's crew will be transferred to the Leviathan"

"Leviathan's a Mercury class isn't she Sir" Bill was exited at that prospect. Mercuries were currently the most powerful ships in the fleet and all of them served as the flagships of battlestar groups. Although he would be sad to see the Galactica go, at least she wasn't heading off to rot in the boneyard with the other ships of her class. For the newly minted Admiral Galactica was a step up from Valkyrie, Leviathan however would effectively be a leap into orbit.

"Yes she is. Leviathan is the first Mercury to be built with the Mark 4 upgrades already installed"

"Admiral, you know my opinions on…"

"I know Bill" Nagala interrupted "But I am going to ask you, just this one time, don't rip apart her computers apart. The Mark 4 upgrades include several dozen manual security systems. So if you run into trouble you can manually separate the computers at the pull of a lever. But with the new firewalls you probably won't ever need to do that and if that still doesn't satisfy you I can always make this an order" Nagala really didn't want to have this conversation, which would probably become an argument within a few minutes. Adama's views on computer networks were relics from an age when such fears were valid. With modern firewalls and safeguards the fleet's ships _could _operate with live computer networks with very little risk from Cylon viruses.

"Very well then _Sir_ but if we end up fighting the Cylons I'm pulling the plug as soon as something goes wrong" Adama conceded with a heavy voice

"Thank you. Finally once you've taken over Leviathan you and your new fleet will relieve the flotilla currently guarding the object"

"Who's in command there currently"

"Commander Jacob Gram, he's a good kid. Probably go far in the long run"

"Well then Sir. I'll report to Galactica then" Adama stood up and saluted

Admiral Nagala stood and returned it "Good luck Bill"

**Caprica, Later That Day**

Gaius Baltar was a happy man. He was young, smart, rich and he'd just had what he would call his best frak in years. As Gina lay beside him, Gaius let his eyes wander along her body, taking in every curve and tone present. He was still lying there when his doorbell pinged.

Grumbling in annoyance, Gaius quickly got his pants back on followed a moment later by a ruffled shirt. Striding to the door, he took a moment to compose himself, although he would like to blast whoever had ruined his moment it wouldn't do anything for his public image if he did so.

The doorbell rang again and Gaius called out "Be there in one moment, hold on"

When he opened the door, he found two men in black suits standing outside, one was tall and thin and the other was of similar height but appeared to be at least double the weight of his fellow.

"Can I help you gentlemen" the Scientist asked

"Yes Doctor Baltar" The thin one replied "We've been dispatched to bring you to a secure facility for a briefing"

"Briefing, briefing about what"

"I was merely told to inform you of a Krypter-Delta-Blue"

"I'm sorry what" Baltar's voice had suddenly changed completely. Instead of his usual confident tone he now spoke in a firm voice that several of his colleagues knew as he put on when he was focusing on a task.

"Krypter-Delta-Blue Doctor" The fatter man spoke this time "I don't know what it means but we were informed that you would know"

"Ah yes, yes I do. Know what it means, that is. I'll need to grab a few things though do you mind staying out here for a few minutes"

"Go ahead Doctor" the thinner one replied

Baltar almost flew back into the house. He needed his personal computer, a few changes of clothes and what else… oh he needed to tell Sara that he would be heading out for a few days.

Bursting into the bedroom, causing the blonde to jolt out of bed, Gaius quickly dived to the floor to retrieve the suitcase he kept under his bed.

"Gaius what's going on?" she asked

"Defence Ministry, they want me to have a look at something and I'll probably be gone for a few days" the Scientist replied as he placed half a dozen shirts and pants into the case.

"Is it serious, you're rushing around like a madman"

"No, not at all, I'll be back before you notice" Gaius gave her a quick kiss and then he had dashed to his office, with the suitcase sliding on the polished floor and half a minute later he was back at the door with his computer in one hand, being led by the two men to a waiting car.

"Krypter-Delta-Blue" was something the Baltar had honestly never expected to hear. Due to his work with the Defence Ministry he had been approached to sign up for a plan that would allow the government to call on him to study any non-colonial technology that was discovered. Krypter-Delta-Blue, was the code word to alert him as to what he should expect, although truthfully for the first time in his life, Gaius Baltar was completely clueless.

**Author's Notes**

Okay so this was a short chapter but it was just a quick one to set the scene for the next chapter, which will be far greater both in words and significance to the storyline. Hopefully those few who have added this to their favourite's list will enjoy this chapter but like most writers I want _**reviews**_, not only do they give me pointers but they give me a much needed self esteem boost.

Also, this update a day after the last will be an anomaly. After this you can expect the story to be updated every 3-10 days.


	3. Chapter 3

**Escortstar Guardian, In Orbit Near The Object****, One Month Later**

Having risen to command of the escortstar Guardian from the fleet's ranks of engineers, Colonel Jacob Gram had spent most of spare time during this deployment on the Guardian's observation deck, examining the object, where he currently could be located along four other crewmen on the deck doing the same. The entire crew was ecstatic, here they were on the cusp of humanity's first contact with an alien race and, until they were relived in three months by BSG 75, they were effectively leading the military's part charge.

Although many on the ships in his flotilla had taken to calling the Object "the Fork", Jacob refused to think of it that way. He could never think of something as large and mysterious as the Object in such a manner. He'd give anything for the chance to get inside and see what made it tick, but unfortunately Admiral Nagala's orders were clear. No docking and no boarding of the object. Of course though that hadn't stopped him from acquiring copies of the scans and visual checks performed by Guardian's two Raptors, it wasn't very hands on but it would sate his curiosity for now.

Apart from inspecting the alien device though the only thing in this mainly empty solar system was the construction of the research base on the moon. It had become obvious by now that it was abandoned and so hundreds of men and women were currently being gathered back in the colonies to come and find out what its purpose was and those hundreds would require food, bunks and, on this world, air. Currently the fleet supply vessel Erickson was handling that portion of the mission

There was only a small team studying the object for the time being, lead by Doctor Gaius Baltar. Although so far all that they had found on the object were half a dozen ports emitting some kind of strange thermal signature and what the Doctor had theorised as being an access point of some kind, the Doctor had told him several times that they would find something big eventually, albeit after he whined for a few minutes about not being able to board it.

Among Guardian's crew, theories as to its purpose ranged from it being long range communications relay system to being a planet-killing mass driver, similar to what Picon had considered building for use against the other colonies prior to unification. Although Jacob had initially favoured the mass driver theory he had dismissed that later. The object had no discernable means of propulsion beyond basic station keeping thrusters and without propulsion such a design would be useless. Of course it might have some kind of jump drive aboard but then the question was, how did it get here with no crew aboard if it could have jumped home or to a nearby friendly world.

Jacob sighed and wondered if all the questions he had about the object would be ever answered. Or whether they would be buried in the Fleet's mountains of classified files.

**Raptor D289, Callsign-Regent****, Five Hours Later**

Gaius normally hated the military's vacuum suits, although he reasoned that he would probably appreciate it a lot more if he suddenly found himself outside the air filled interior of Regent's Raptor, currently he was to busy fuming over his inability to actually land on the object and take a look. Who knew, if that actually did turn out to be an airlock they had discovered earlier, the object might be operational before the army of engineers even arrived.

But noooo here he was, in possession of the greatest human mind of all time and unable to get a close up study what could become known as the greatest discovery in human history since FTL. All on some bloody over cautious Admiral's orders. At least he was allowed to do scans of the outer structure. Visual, LADAR and penetrating radar were still providing some data and that would sate his curiosity for now.

"Doc, are you ready for the next pass" the Raptor's pilot, a Lieutenant who insisted on being called by his callsign, asked.

"Yes I am Regent, although I feel I should once more state that we should be aboard that thing rather then, once again, staying half a kilometre away and simply running scans" Baltar replied

"Yeah well, don't take it out on me Doc, bring it up with Nagala next chance you get, or better yet go to your great buddy Adar" Gaius sighed at the last remark. During their many days together in the cramped confines of the Raptor, Baltar had quickly learned of the pilot's near fanatic dislike of the current Administration, which in Regent's opinion had mishandled everything from the economy to defence to education, although the Scientist did agree that Adar's administration was not likely to survive the next election.

"Let's just run a few more scans and head back to Erickson. I want to start building a 3D model of the object using the data we've collected as soon as possible"

"But I thought we hadn't scanned the whole thing yet"

"Yes but with the data from the other teams we've collectively scanned both the prongs and the housing for those rings. I can use that data to start making the model and then add to it with information from our future scans."

"Then lets get this over with then shall we" Regent then activated his radio "Guardian Regent, beginning our next scan"

There was a slight rumble as the Raptor's engines shut down and then several slight shudders as regent began using the ship's manoeuvring thrusters to move them along, beside the object, at a slow speed.

Regent flicked a few switches then said "Scanners are running, you getting this doc"

As streams of information began flowing across the screens in front of him Baltar replied "Yes, I'm receiving now"

As soon as he got the chance he was going to _demand_ that Admiral Nagala give him permission to board the object.

**The Colony, Central Meeting Area, One Day Later**

Although the large meeting area in the centre of the Colony was always full of Cylons of all models, only one representative of each model sat at the table. It was in this room that decisions not affecting just one ship, or fleet but their entire race were made and the topic of this day was the postponing of the long prepared for extermination of the Humans. What had sparked the renewed was the reports the Cylons had received from some of their highest placed infiltrators in the Colonies.

Currently the Ones were arguing for them to merely accelerating the pace of the plan and to exterminate the humans before any kind of alien force came into play.

"We all know what the humans are like, one they realise we have a serious disadvantage they will seek us out and destroy us. Mark my words, virus or no virus, aliens or no aliens we have to strike now before our chance is gone forever"

However the Ones were countered by the Sixes who advocated renewing relations with the humans, so that they may also have the chance to make first contact with an alien race and to take advantage of any kind of technology or knowledge that could come their way because of it.

"We know that the humans have an ever growing movement that supports our views. Two of those supporters are members of the Quorum. If we approach them at this crucial juncture, offer support to the humans they may even be grateful enough to let us share their new technologies"

The Fours proposed that they merely wait until the Colonials made contact with these aliens. After all, they might end up doing their job for them and then if they proved hostile to the Cylons, they could merely pack up and run, or stand and fight depending on the enemies capabilities.

"We have always had a great knowledge of how the humans fight, that is why we needed our viruses to defeat their superior warships and these aliens are a completely unknown factor. It is far wiser to sit and wait it out, we stand to gain nothing but we could lose everything."

The remaining models were undecided but the Twos and Fives were leaning towards siding with the Fours.

The debate raged for many hours, with the Ones trying desperately to convince their siblings to commence the attack, but failing to sway them. The Sixes were able to win over the Eights but the remaining votes went to the Fours proposal.

The Cylons would hold off on their attack but their infiltrators in the Colonies would be ordered to act in accordance with their covers, so at least some of them could be heading into battle.

As they various Cylons filed out of the meeting, a One, the model known as John Cavil hid his furious rage behind a mask of a seemingly emotionless machine. His siblings would not fight the humans, but John had learned long before the others even spawned that just because a motion was defeated it did not mean it was dead.

Turning to his personal centurion he ordered "Gather Samuel and James and tell them to meet me at my personal heavy raider, tell no one of this but them and when you are done wipe all data pertaining to this task from your memory banks"

No, the plan was far from dead.

**Scorpion Fleet Shipyards****, Battlestar Leviathan, One Week Later**

Leviathan was a monster in the truest sense of the word. At just under 1800 metres long, covered in heavy composite armour, mounting 40 main gun turrets and dozens of point defence guns and carrying a wing of over two hundred Vipers and fifty Raptors she far outstripped anything Adama had ever been aboard, whether it was a baby battlestar like Valkyrie, or a soon to be ex flag ship like Galactica.

His next command was indeed a fine one and she was almost ready to leave the docks. She was even going to be present for Galactica's decommissioning ceremony. After the flyby, the Galactica's Vipers would land on her successor and later that day most of the crew would transfer over. The Leviathan would then escort Galactica back to Caprica, before linking up with the rest of the reformed BSG 75 and jumping out to the Object.

Only half the crew would be going with him to his new command of course but the rest would be heading off to crew one of BSG 75's Valkyries, Thor, so they would still be under his command and better yet, they weren't going to be kicked out of the fleet. Every one of the crewmen he had commanded on Galactica were among the best he had ever had in their respective fields and if first contact turned into a conflict, or if the Cylons came back all of them would be sorely needed, although many of the ones that he had spoken to about their next posting were apprehensive about serving on a ship named for the god of a splinter religion.

With him, as always on these inspections, was Saul Tigh. Being one of the crew that would be following the Admiral over to Leviathan but having even less experience with a Mercury as his long time friend Tigh had come to learn as much as possible before he became Leviathan's XO. Although so far his "learning" experience seemed to amount to reading the horde of manuals that the chief had heaped into his hands, while making jokes about his age, and in true bureaucratic tradition about three quarters of the material was stuff he already. Honestly, he got a few wrinkles and suddenly he didn't know how to organise DC crews over the ship's computer system.

The Admiral meanwhile had been busy trying to familiarise himself with Leviathan's computer system. He had, quite reluctantly, acceded to Admiral Nagala's request but that didn't mean that he wouldn't remove as much of the threat as he could. While Saul inspected the rest of the ship he had spent most of his inspection in the CIC going over the computers.

Currently however the two officers were onboard a raptor, their inspection completed, heading back to Galactica.

After grinning at Saul's mound of manuals, Bill asked "You got enough there Saul"

"Frakking engineers give me a dozen books I've already read then demand that I know them cover to cover" the Colonel moaned

"Well, at least you can get away with not reading them. I've been pouring over the computer guides since I got them" Adama replied

"I thought the Admiral gave you orders not to screw with Leviathan's computers"

"No he told me not to take the network apart, screwing around with Leviathan is still my decision. I'm trying to find a way to isolate a few of the less protected systems without impeding on the ship's performance"

"What LADAR, short range comms"

"Those and a few others, I'm going after the system's that don't necessarily need to be networked but are equipped with less protection"

Saul held up a book and replied sarcastically "Well don't switching anything that's in these. The Gods know I have enough I'm expected to know before I toss a few hundred cubit's worth of paper into a viper's thrusters"

The two friends both started laughing as the Raptor engaged its jump drive.

**Escortstar Guardian, In Orbit Near The Object, Three Days Later**

As Gaius donned his borrowed flight suit, he felt like giggling with excitement. He had done it, he had finally convinced the Admiral to let him take a team aboard the Object for closer study and better yet Colonel Gram had given him a Raptor, piloted by Baltar's old friend Regent, as soon as he had told the military officer the news, to transport and support his team for their initial entry.

As the Raptor swung around for the final approach to what he believed he went he checked his suit's seals, it wouldn't do him any good if he left the raptor and he died from sudden decompression. He was about to make his mark on human history and nothing would stop him.

"Twenty seconds to infiltration, entry team line up" the Regent ordered, as the Raptor began slowly inching towards the door using its manoeuvring thrusters the entry team, made up of Baltar, chiefs Ellington and Williams for engineering support and marine Sergeant Carver and Lieutenant Tru for security, stood up and hooked their safety lines to a rail just above the door. Through the lining of his helmet, Baltar could vaguely hear the low hiss of the cabin's air supply slowly leaking into space. This was it, he was about to make history.

"Good luck guys, go find out what the fork does" Regent radioed as the door opened

The Lieutenant went first with Chief Williams right behind him. The door appeared similar to the starship doors from the old Cylon War era ships, however in place the large locking mechanism it had a large flat panel, raised slight above the surrounding surface. After Baltar had identified the door he had theorised that it may be some kind of touch screen.

However as the two soldiers floated towards it, the panel began to glow and the door immediately opened. Everyone watching was stunned until Williams muttered over the radio about motion sensors. Approaching with even more apprehension then before, Baltar breathed a sigh of relief after the two soldiers placed their magnetised boots on the "floor" of the interior.

Although they had expected long corridors branching out through the object Tru and Williams were instead greeted by a small room with nothing but a series of long flat panels running around the room at around waist height. As the two of them slowly entered, both with their sidearms in hand, the Lieutenant accidently brushed one of the panels and suddenly the entire room was lit up by alien letters and numbers, there was a rumbling that nearly through them off their feet.

Back in the Raptor, Gaius watched as lights began to appear along the objects surface and the rings in its centre began to rotate and a strange blue light, similar to a hologram, burst into existence. On the area communications channel hundreds of voices began asking what was happening.

But all Gaius Baltar could think of was the possibility that someone had beaten him to his discovery.

**Turian Patrol Frigate, Firaxa, The Same Time**

As the Turian vessel prowled through a distant Nebula, her engines and major systems offline but her sensors running, her crew was mainly on the lookout for pirates. But when they began to detect Element Zero emissions that matched a Mass Relay where, according to their charts, there should be none, her engines were spun up in moments and she sped towards the source.

On the bridge, Command Vakarian began recording a message to the local fleet command. He simply stated "Previously unrecorded Mass Relay detected in charted space, moving to investigate. Request backup be placed on standby"

The Firaxa was currently three hours out from the reading. As reasons for this strange occurrence ran through the Commander's mind, the most likely one and the reason he settled on was that it was probably pirates activating a dormant relay. Such activities had been highly illegal for civilians since the Rachni Wars and whenever a government opened a new relay they normally sent through a large military fleet.

When the Firaxa was one hour out he received a reply that cause the Commander to shift his mouth into the Turian equivalent of a smile. He was to secure the relay, then wait for the sector defence fleet to arrive. Two dozen cruisers, many frigate flotilla's and even a dreadnaught were one their way.

As the peacekeepers of the Galaxy. The Turians took breaches of Citadel Law _very_, seriously.

**A/N**

Okay, I don't like this chapter. It's entirely filler that only serves to give a little to the overall storyline beyond activating the Relay and what introducing what Cylon's are planning now that the "Plan" has gone a bit haywire.

Now a few things I feel I should mention based on the reviews.

Although the Turians are Humanity's first contact in this fic, they aren't going to be bashed around to much. Their ships are smaller, but they have the advantage of shields and their spinal guns, which in a fleet action could do some serious damage. I'm going to try and portray them as being a much more successful and effective military power in this rather then the no hopers that some people choose to write them as. They will be a bit frightened at first though by the the alien Dreadnought Fleets.

While their will most certainly be a religious element in this story, it will only play a small part. Like I wrote earlier I'm throwing all that "Divine Hand" crap out the airlock.

And finally Earth will only be mentioned in passing, like I said I'm going to be throwing the Final Five into this with a few minor changes, so Earth as the Cylons know it is nuked as far as this fic is concerned.


	4. Chapter 4

**Turian Dreadnaught Palveran, In Orbit Near Newly Discovered Mass Relay**

The Palveran was a mighty vessel, the flagship of the Delta Patrol Fleet, and her meeting room reflected this. Huge and circular, it contained hundreds of chairs, each row raised slightly further from the ground, so that at the General's orders a meeting of all the fleet's commanders and captains could be called for everything from mission briefings to award ceremonies.

And it was where Commander Haren Vakarian found himself. As a frigate commander he was sitting near the back of the room along with all the other frigate commanders. Seated in front of him were several cruiser captains and in the centre of the room near a large hologram projector system was General Septimus, the fleet's commander. All the commanders in the room were talking, as they did in these situations with varying degrees of confidence about the coming mission.

As the General raised his hand for silence, the muttering and discussion died off. Once he was satisfied that he had the room's attention the General began to speak "As you all know, earlier today, the frigate Firaxa discovered a previously unknown Mass Relay. This system has been documented before but at that time the Relay was enclosed within an ice moon and hence not identified. We believe that the Relay was activated by a pirate group or a mining corporation. We of course are here to destroy or arrest them. The 3rd scout flotilla and the cruisers Renix and Lulicrun will form our advance guard through the relay, they will scout the system on the opposite end and report back to the fleet. If they encounter heavy resistance they will fall back and we shall make a tactical appraisal as to how to proceed, although the most likely course would be that we merely muster our entire force and violently introduce ourselves" many of the Turians smiled "Now individual orders will be transmitted to your omni tools as you leave. We begin in three hours, good luck and dismissed"

As he and his fellow commanders began to file out, Vakarian was one of many feeling happy about the coming mission. His ship would be one of the first to go into action and that was always a good thing. If he bagged an enemy vessel, then it would be even better.

**Escortstar Guardian, In Orbit Near The Object, Three Hours Later**

Gaius Baltar didn't know how long it had been since the accidental activation of the object, he had been working to hard to bother looking at a clock. Sensor readings from the raptors currently making scans of the Tuning Fork flowed into his makeshift lab on the Guardian like ambrosia from an upside down bottle.

In short, what he was seeing was incredible, LADAR had identified a material in the centre of the rotating rings and blue glow that as far as he knew seemed to defy the very laws of physics. The curious part of the Scientist's brain told him to rip it out, slam it on a table and run tests until he found it what caused it to do what he had always thought impossible. His more logical, and arguably pessimistic, side however argued that if he did that the Tuning Fork would probably explode and kill them.

He hadn't even left the Lab when Sara arrived at the makeshift moon base with the latest batch of engineers, even though he was the one who had gotten her onto the approved personnel list. He hadn't gone to the flight deck up to greet her when she stepped off the shuttle from the base. And he hadn't noticed when she quietly opened the door to his small laboratory and stepped inside until she slid her arms around his neck and whispered.

"Hmm, I wonder what is more likely to draw your attention Gaius. The prospect of having your already well known name become a household one or a woman wearing the finest new lingerie proposing that you retreat to a more private area"

"Hmm, I think that we should test your proposal right here, don't you" Gaius replied as he swung his chair around and placed a kiss on her ruby red lips.

"If that's your theory Doctor" Sara replied as she broke the kiss and moved towards the door to lock it. Ever since she had begun her infiltration mission it had never ceased to amaze her how easy it was to get close to the supposed genius Gaius Baltar by simply undoing her pants. She imagined that in an hour or two she would know more about the Alien Construct then the Colonial Government did. As Gaius swung his chair around to face her, Sara slowly placed a hand on the front zip of the jumpsuit she had been issued earlier and began to pull it down…

Only to quickly pull the zip back up when the infiltrator heard a series of quick thumps on the hatch door. Before she could say anything, Gaius had stood up with a sigh and went to answer the door. Standing there were two marines with worried looks on their faces, Gaius suddenly remembered that day a few weeks ago when those two agents had shown up at his home and he wondered what was happening now. Not being a military man he didn't realise the significance of the full sets of body armour they were wearing and the rifles, as opposed to their normal pistols, they carried like security blankets.

The in the back of the room however did, the ship was headed into combat.

"Doctor, you and your assistant need to come with us now" One of the marines said

"What, why" Baltar replied

It was at that moment that Commander Gram's voice rang out from the speakers _"Actions Station, Repeat Action Stations, Set Condition One Throughout The Ship"_.

Placing a hand on the Doctor's shoulder Sara said "Gaius let's go" then she turned to the marine who had spoken before "Where are we going"

"Hanger, Ma'am" the marine replied "The Commander wants all the VIPs ready to evacuate in raptors in case we're forced to fight"

"Fight who?" Gaius interrupted.

In the CIC, Joseph was wondering the same thing. A minute ago, without warning, six vessels had suddenly appeared on DRADIS, however rather then suddenly appearing as a ship using a jump drive might. They appeared to approach at an insanely high speed, many times the speed of light before decelerating before slowing down to what he might call "normal" speeds. At the same time the ships had decelerated, the Guardian's sensor system had detected a large burst of energy coming from the area so for now he assumed it was some form of FTL travel.

Two of the vessels appeared to be about 450 metres in length and the other four seemed to be only 120 metres long, although they couldn't be sure, the vessels seemed to be using some kind of localised jamming, perhaps a missile spoofer of some kind, either way it was mucking with Guardians DRADIS. Weapons could still be targeted, but it was impossible to get a clear reading, for now his intelligence specialists relied on visuals from the external cameras.

As for the ship's purpose he had no doubt that they were military due to the fact that the two larger ships appeared to be of the same class of vessel and the same thing could be said of the four smaller ones. There was also the small matter of what appeared to be large cannons poking out of their bows. Judging by their size Joseph guessed that they were small guns with high rates of fire, if they turned out to be some kind of mass driver, then they could quite possibly tear his escortstar to shreds. At only 600 metres in length, ships like his normally dealt with pirates and rogue vessels. In real battles it was standard practice to let much larger battlestars to take the hits while they provided support.

"Lieutenant Etrino, contact the XO at base tell them to bring their missile batteries online and to transmit the hello package to our guests, all frequencies" Joseph ordered

"Aye sir" the communications officer replied

On the camera display, Joseph watched as one of the larger vessels and two of the smaller ones turned towards his ship. The other three were currently manoeuvring, probably to aim their bow guns at the base, although one of the smaller ones appeared to be tilting upwards slightly, which would put her in position to hit the freighter currently in orbit.

The only other contacts on DRADIS were the few raptors that were heading back to their motherships and the Guardian's attack squadron, twenty Vipers and four Raptors, all of which currently had nuclear missiles hung under their wings. Admiral Nagala had realised that just one escortstar would probably run into trouble by itself and so had allowed Joseph to take his pick of certain "special" weapons back on Picon. Each ship was carrying a load of SSN-18 missiles, the only anti-fighter missile in the arsenal _designed_ to carry a nuke. Each Viper had just two but the Raptors had twelve aboard.

"Sir, all batteries report green and CAG reports that they are in position and are ready to go weapons free at your order" Etrino reported

"Lieutenant, tell CAG that if they're fired upon don't wait for my order, blast them to Hades. And transmit a message to the freighter, I want them to spin up their FTL and jump away" Joseph didn't wait for Etrino's reply but instead turned right back to the DRADIS screen.

Although he had never been a keen student of history, back in University he had studied the second Caprica-Picon war while working for his Heavy Aerospace Engineering degree. This situation reminded him of the last battle of the war. For several months Picon's forces had suffered many crushing defeats at the hands of the larger and more advanced Caprican fleet, although the enemy had not hit Picon itself. But that changed when Picon's Supreme Commander Leonidas, requested that they meet over Picon itself to discuss a peace treaty. Taking a mere twenty vessels to meet eighty Capricans, Leonidas allowed his fleet to drift for several days as negotiations continued.

On the fifth day, hours before the hammered out treaty was to be signed, Leonidas's ships opened up with their newly installed mass drive guns while hundreds of fighters from hidden ground bases, surged to the heavens to meet the enemy. With the mass drivers allowing the Picon vessel's shells to punch right through the Caprican defences, they rapidly disabled the enemy carriers and with a numerical superiority in fighter craft they were able to quickly overwhelm the rest while suffering few casualties in return with long range gun volleys while Caprican missiles were destroyed in flight. The final tally had been eighteen Caprican vessels captured, twenty nine destroyed, the fleet's Admiral dead and the remaining thirty three had retreated back to their staging base near Ragnar. The results of that battle would eventually lead up to the creation of the warstars, which in turn lead to the creation of the first battlestars, several hundred years later.

What he saw happening on DRADIS reminded him of a computer simulation of the battle. The enemy didn't appear to be doing that much but they could be preparing for a single, stunning blow to the head, which would remove Guardian from the picture and leave the remaining civilians at their mercy. And just like that battle this encounter, although it may lead to peace or war, would most likely influence human history for decades, if not centuries to come.

**Turian Frigate Firaxa, Preparing To Engage Enemy Forces, That Same Time**

This was quickly turning into one most intriguing missions Commander Vakarian had ever been a part of, with his brother being the detective of the family and all he had always left mystery and intrigue to him, but that didn't mean he wasn't enjoying it. Here was a group of ship's that didn't resemble anything he had ever seen and although they appeared to be filling the communications channels with some kind jamming signal made up of gibberish computer code they hadn't fired on his vessels yet.

They also appeared to use weapons of a different configuration, instead of a main gun running along the length of the Turian ships the heavy cruiser protecting the base and supposedly unarmed ship, appeared to use multiple guns arranged in batteries along it's length along with several dozen smaller rotary guns, reminiscent of the days before GARDIAN lasers, and tubes for missiles, a lot of missiles. The major threat though were the ships arrayed between the Turians and the cruiser, he wasn't an expert on nuclear weapons but he knew a _lot_ when they popped up on the sensors and while his kinetic barriers would stop the missiles themselves, heat and radiation would bleed through and against his frigate it would probably do serious damage. Of course nuclear ordinance had been banned long ago by the Citadel Weapons Conventions so having them was just one more crime on these pirate's list.

Most of the Commanders were in agreement, this was probably a major mercenary and piracy operation but the fact that they had nukes made it all the more important that they be shut down. The last time a pirate group had built up a small fleet and acquired a sizable stock of nukes, thousands had lost their lives and thousands more had been taken into slavery before the Council had let the Turians go in but by the time it was over enemy missile swarm tactics had claimed dozens of frigates, a few cruisers and had crippled a dreadnaught.

Leaving his thoughts alone for the moment, Commander Vakarian turned back to his battle display system. In the corner there was a clock, currently it read thirty seconds, thirty seconds to combat. The plan was relatively simple, his frigate and another from his flotilla, supported by the Renix would eliminate the warship while another frigate would attempt to disable the freighter and the fourth frigate and the Lulicrun would begin a bombardment of the missile base on the moon before they landed troops to ensure total control of the facility.

Vakarian looked at the clock again, five seconds to combat.

**Escortstar Guardian, ****Preparing To Engage Enemy Forces**

"Energy spikes, repeat energy spikes" Lieutenant Harris reported

The ship rumbled under what felt like weapons impacts and several crewmen fell to the ground, as he picked himself up Joseph shouted "Report, what hit us"

"Enemy kinetics sir" Harris replied "we've lost a heavy gun and two missile tubes, section 2D has been exposed to vacuum"

"Seal of that section and get a medical team down there to evac the wounded" Joseph ordered "Etrino tell our fighters to fire all missiles then move engage the frigate that's lining up at the freighter, let us take care of the rest. Order all gun batteries to engage the other three enemy escorts and prep for missile strike on the enemy capital ships"

"Yes sir" Etrino replied "All Vipers, this is Guardian you are weapons free, repeat weapons free. Sir I've lost all contact with the base and we were feeding them DRADIS returns to aim their missiles"

"See if you can get in touch with them Lieutenant, we're going to need those missiles"

On the DRADIS screen, the friendly contacts maintaining their position in between Guardian and the enemy suddenly became obscured by several dozen contacts that bore the sinister nuclear symbol. As they began to spread out from their launch points they split into six groups, one for each enemy ship, the escorts were targeted by ten missiles each and the both capital ships had twelve missiles gunning for them.

"Sir, Weekly reports that enemy point defence are engaging the missiles, he says it looks like some kind of laser system" Etrino reported

As Joseph watched, missiles began to disappear from the DRADIS display. Every second another one or two blinked off until only five missiles got though, two on the capital ship gunning for Guardian, two on the escort going after the freighter and one on the capital ship lining up to hit the moon base, as detonations appeared on sensors the crew cheered, against ships that small the nukes would probably be a deathblow. The DRADIS blurred for a moment then cleared as the residual heat and radiation died away, to reveal _all_ the enemy vessels still intact.

"Etrino, tell the CAG I want a visual report on damage" Joseph didn't know how the enemy had survived that attack intact, that many nukes would have put a Columbia class battlestar in drydock for a month.

"Sir, the CAG reports that the escort is venting atmosphere and he can see her engines dying, other birds report that the two capitals have both suffered damage to their bow and they appear to have stopped firing their main guns for now"

"Good, Harris reroute our heavy batteries to focus on the damaged sections of those capital ships and standby our point defence guns to receive enemy missiles and fighters, if their guns are gone they'll probably launch fighters if they have any. Etrino, tell the fighters to make a few passes over that damaged escort then fall back to provide cover for us"

The ship rumbled again and Etrino shouted "Impacts, one on the bow, the rest were glances. Sections 3A through 3F and flight deck have been breached and heavily damaged. We may not be able to recover our fighters Sir"

"Can we still launch our evac raptors?" Joseph asked, if the FTL was lost to the next slavo, then they would be trapped here without the raptors and he had a sinking feeling that he wouldn't be winning this battle, or even bringing Guardian out of this mess in one piece.

"I have a DC team inbound to make an assessment sir, hold on" Etrino stopped as he raised his hand to his headphones "Sir, fighters are reporting that the enemy vessels are protected by some kind of shield, they've made two runs against the escort but none of their shells have hit the hull, they were also briefly engaged by enemy point defence systems, three birds down, no eject"

"That would explain how they survived our nukes, tell the fighters to keep trying and have all the raptors currently deployed to return to our external airlocks, if DC says that we can fly our raptors our get them away, if not get the civilians to the airlocks . Harris, activate all our defensive batteries and target the escorts hitting us and get the FTL spun up, if this gets any worse I want to jump away at my go"

"Yes sir, all batteries are online and engineering says that they'll only need a few minutes to recharge our FTL" Harris replied

The ship shuddered slightly as Guardian's heavy mass drivers began to launch salvos against capital ships, while the point defence guns, normally used to engage enemy fighters and missiles, began spitting thousands of rounds at the enemy escorts.

As the salvo began, Joseph switched the DRADIS view screen over to the feed from Guardian's external cameras. Zooming in on one of the escorts, he thought he could make out a thin blue surface appearing where his ship's shells impacted on the hull, the problem was that the blue film was several metres away from the actual ship hull.

"Harris, inform all tube crews to prepare for a missile strike, load all tubes not already carrying them with nukes and unsafe our strategics, I want to take as many of these bastards out as possible before we jump" Joseph ordered, so far the only kind of damage he had been able to do was with the nukes, so he'd hit them with all the nukes he had.

"Yes sir, crews are loading the missiles now. We should be ready for the strike in thirty seconds." Harris replied

Turning back to the camera feed, which was now focused on a damaged capital ship, Joseph watched as what he had once though of as his mighty guns did nothing to ships that had barely a third of his tonnage. It was then that, like a bolt from Zeus himself, a round from one of the heavy guns managed to impact on the hull.

Harris began to say something but Joseph interrupted "I know Harris, focus all guns, heavy and defensive, on the ship we just hit then focus all the guns on the two escorts. We can drop there shields and I want these bastards to stop shooting at me"

The capital ship began to swing off course as rounds designed to kill a heavily armoured battlestar slammed into the lightly armoured alien vessel. Now it was a race against time, would the enemy hit something vital on his ship, or would he knock down their shields and destroy them first.

"Sir, DC teams report that we'll be able to launch raptors from the flight deck without to much trouble" Etrino reported

"Good tell the evac transports to lift off and jump away as soon as they make safe distance. Harris, fire two more salvos then reposition our heavies to…"

The ship rumbled under another impact and the screens around the bridge along with the lights suddenly darkened, for a moment the CIC crew were stumbling around in pitch darkness before Guardian's emergency lights switched on.

Etrino and Harris rapidly rebooted their stations to check he ship's status, meanwhile Joseph stared at the blank DRADIS console. Looking up from his console Harris said "Frak they hit the reactor emergency power is online but we'll need to evacuate Sir, FTL is gone along with all our weapons"

"Alright then" Joseph replied "Lieutenant Harris, get your crews to set a timer of forty minutes on all remaining nuclear warheads. Etrino, while he does that, I want you to organise an evacuation, get as many people as you can onto the raptors and get the rest onto the shuttle. Radio the viper jocks and tell them to land at the base and try to bolster the defence, we'll be back with a full battlegroup as soon as we can."

Guardian had served him well and she had fought the enemy as well as he could expect but Joseph wasn't going to leave her intact. If he was lucky his girl would take an enemy vessel with her but if it did happen he wouldn't be there to see it.

"Etrino, Harris, follow me we're leaving"

**Turian Frigate Firaxa, Preparing To Engage Enemy Forces, That Same Time**

As the heavy cruiser's engine's died, Commander Vakarian breathed a sigh of relief. He had never seen any ship short of an Asari dreadnaught take that much fire without active shields, whoever had built that ship must have had access to some serious credits. Scans had indicated materials ranging from steel to depleted uranium present in the hull, some tanks in private armies and solar research ships used composite armour like that but he had never seen it used on a warship, the it just cost to much despite the benefits.

There was also the weapon's systems, if this group had built more ships like this then the Turian's would probably need more ships then what they had brought, the two heavily damaged cruisers and the gutted frigate were evidence enough of that.

Then there was the apparent lack of any kind of element zero core onboard. They hadn't detected it at first because of the ambient radiation from the nearby mass relay but the increasingly strange vessel didn't have a gram of eezo aboard. The same was true of their fighters, although how their pilots could survive the manoeuvrers they had performed without blacking out without the protective field of an eezo field were beyond him.

His earphone buzzed and one of his officers began to speak "Commander, we have detected several of their strike craft launching from the stricken vessel, they are too small for any kind of FTL so I would assume they are attempting to retreat to their base"

"Move to intercept them with our GARDIAN lasers and attempt to disable them I want prisoners to interrogate" Vakarian replied

Although he couldn't actually feel it, in his mind's eye the Commander could see his frigate closing in on the helpless shuttles. One the battle-display in front of him were a dozen small contacts leaving the cruiser along with one slightly larger one, probably some kind of shuttle seeing as the others were gunships, there were also eight fighters currently heading for the base. However while he couldn't catch the fighters his frigate was in a perfect position to cut the gunships off, being almost exactly between them and the base.

However before his eyes, the contacts on the screen began to disappear. The Firaxa raced towards them but no one was firing, the ships were simply disappearing. There we only two left when the frigate entered max range for there lasers and a moment later one of the symbols on the hologram was spinning around but a moment after that the final gunship disappeared.

Puzzled as to what happened Harren radioed his external sensors operator "Can you show me visuals of those gunships"

"Yes sir, I was just going over them myself" the officer replied

Harren the switched over to the XO's channel "Move us toward gunship we disabled and prepare a vacuum team to move the ship into our hanger bay. Radio me when they're aboard"

The display of the battlefield disappeared. The last thing it showed was the damaged Renix and Lulicrun moving to land troops on the moon, while the frigate Jenoran began its transition through the relay to report back to the fleet.

These ships were a true oddity, as he watched they disappeared in a flash of light and didn't reappear. This mission was quickly producing questions faster then he could think of answers and he had a feeling that it was far from over.

**Author's Notes**

Yay new chapter, featuring first contact and first blood between humans and the Turians. Hopefully some of what I've written will answer a few questions that were posted in last chapter's reviews. Speaking of which, **PLEASE REVIEW THIS** alerts and favourites are fine but reviews are better.

Also, I'm going to rewrite some of chapter 3, so when I post the next chapter you should go back and check that.

Anyway, enjoy and remember to review.


	5. Chapter 5

**Turian Frigate Firaxa, Conducting Retrieval Operations****, 20 Minutes After Combat**

The twelve soldiers and six engineers were all wearing vacuum suits as the strange gunship was dragged into the Firaxa's hanger bay by the frigate's shuttle. It was vaguely smooth but at the same time blocky, with what used to be two large engines at the rear, before the GARDIAN laser took them off, and multiple gas based manoeuvring thrusters installed along it's wings and what the commander assumed was it's cockpit or hold. It looked a lot more like an actual flying machine as opposed to the Turian shuttle which was currently setting down next two it, which Vakarian had always thought looked more like a ground vehicle without wheels.

He had had the gunship brought aboard his frigate so that he could be the first to interrogate the pirates. During the battle the two cruiser Captains and his flotilla's Captain had been killed, making him the ranking officer until reinforcements arrived in little over an hour and with the rank came the duty of sitting down with the enemy first.

The large hanger door slid shut and moments later a low hissing noise became audible as atmosphere was pumped in. Ten seconds after that, the Commander's helmet beeped, to inform him that he could now breathe without the suit. Vakarian kept his suit on but several of the others in the hanger pulled off their helmets, a ship's recycled air was better then a suit's recycled air.

Turning to the leader of the marines he said "Sergeant deploy your men, I want to crack this thing open and question the prisoners before the General arrives"

"Yes sir" he replied before turning too his men "two of you stack up under the engines, the rest form a circle around the craft. Sir, I'd like you and the engineers to hang back until we give the all clear"

As the commander and the engineers moved back towards the rear wall, the marines began to form their circle. As they did that though the sergeant stepped up onto the "wing" of the craft, nobody could really tell what he was doing inside his suit but it looked like he either rolled his shoulders or took a deep breath and then he simply knocked on the hatch before leaping to the side and ducking down with the two soldiers hiding by the engines.

All the Turians in the hanger stared at the hatch, this was the worst part of these sorts operations, chances were that one of them would probably be killed and as such they were all tense.

There was a loud _clack_ and the marines raised their rifles. The hatch on the side of the gunship swung upwards and six beings stepped out, with their hands on their heads. Vakarian didn't know what to make of them, they appeared similar in build to the Asari but were much more bulky. Two of them wore what he assumed were some kind of vacuum suit, two, one of who he assumed was of another gender or subspecies to the others, where wearing ruffled full body uniforms and the final two wore some kind of body armour over black uniforms. This wasn't pirates, this was an entirely new species and his race had just killed a few hundred of their people. Although he wasn't to high on the military food chain, Vakarian hadn't gotten his frigate without a bit of political manoeuvring and he knew which screwups would die down and which would end up with crew in the proverbial airlock.

Still it explained why they didn't have any eezo based technology, this relay was probably their first encounter with Prothean civilisation.

"Sergeant" Vakarian ordered "Escort these beings to the brig" he didn't have the authority to even begin interrogating them now, hell it probably wasn't even legal to handle them like this, not that anyone would complain

As the sergeant grabbed the prisoners, Vakarian opened a radio link to his XO on the bridge "Lieutenant deploy a team to investigate the cruiser we engaged. Their mission is information retrieval, both the main computers and any personal data-pads they find"

"Yes sir, I'll see if the Novis has anyone available for the mission, their ground team is the secondary reserve force for the assault on the pirate's base, so they probably won't be needed" the XO replied

"Hmm, Tell their commander to get over their as soon as possible to retrieve that data. How's the ground assault going?"

"Captain Arranus reports that they've taken a few hundred prisioners, mostly what he assumes to be civilian construction crews, however there are still several military operatives still moving throughout the base and he's moving teams to take them out now"

Vakarian sighed "Alright, get the Novis moving and inform me when Arranus call the all clear. I'll be in my quarters" after the day he was having, Harren needed a lie down, not so much to rest as to just think.

**Turian Dreadnaught Palveran, En Route To Battlezone****, 20 Minutes Later**

After receiving a report from the frigate, General Septimus had retreated to the briefing room, alone, to review the readings of the engagement and immediately begun moving the fleet into the relay, with the Palveran in the lead. Despite Commander Vakarian's recommendation he had not called up another fleet to aid in this operation, the forces at their disposal would be more then sufficient.

What troubled him were the ships that the frigates had faced, a complete lack of element zero, composite armour and a large load of nuclear weapons. Being a semi-restricted substance that was only found in a few locations around the galaxy, element zero was easily monitored and tracked by the council. If a pirate group was attempting to build a fleet of large warships that used no eezo, then they could potential strike at any number of relays, along with the ships that passed through them, with relative impunity and the fleets wouldn't be able to track them down and trap them in the manner they usually did, by simply tracking the shipments of eezo and finding the planets they ejected their drive cores on, they wouldn't have FTL of course but nobody said that pirates were smart. The Turian fleets would still hunt them down eventually of course but it would be a much longer process and many lives would probably be lost in the process, mostly on the enemy's side.

As he restarted the holodisplay once more an ensign entered the room and saluted "General, the Captain asked me to inform you that we will be arriving in a matter of minutes"

"Thank you Ensign, please inform the Captain that I will be heading for the bridge one I finish here"

"Yes sir" the Ensign saluted once more and left the briefing room.

Deactivating the projector, Septimus left the briefing room. As they were due to arrive just as the crew switched over to the beta cycle, as he proceeded to the bridge Septimus was forced to return several dozen salutes from new crewmembers who didn't yet know of his immense dislike of military protocol and the crew they were replacing were too tired to care, even in peacetime the Turians worked their soldiers hard. As he got closer to the bridge though, the new shift began to take over and the corridors quickly emptied.

"All crew, prepare for transition out of the relay" the Palveran's PA system blared

There was the slight jolt as the Palveran decelerated, then the Palveran's Captain contacted Spetimus over his suit radio "General, you'd better double time it up here to contact Commander Vakarian. He's just forwarded a report that you'll find interesting"

**Battlestar Nova, On Patrol Near ****Serenity Anchorage, That Same Time**

All in all it had been a routine patrol for Nova. The Valkyrie class battlestar had jumped out to Serenity from Scorpia and had been running drills and exercises ever since as the vessel sailed along on its four week patrol near the distant fleet base, which monitored mining activities in the nearby Freeman system and the shipping from the mines back to the colonies.

On day thirteen, right before an alert launch exercise, several contacts were picked up on DRADIS. Although the contacts displayed Fleet IFF codes, the small CAP that was on patrol at the time moved to intercept and discovered a small convoy of raptors and shuttles.

Commander Zorris, Nova's CO, immediately asked the ships what they were doing out here, far from regular shipping lanes, and if he could assist. When he received the reply that they were evacuees from a destroyed escortstar, he had immediately requested that they proceed to Serenity and their Commander land on Nova for a briefing. Even now, Nova's blue squadron was escorting the collection of raptors to Serenity, where a fleet intelligence officer was stationed and would be ready to debrief them in an official capacity.

And so Commander Zorris found himself sitting in his quarters on Nova, sharing a drink with Jacob Gram, and trying to work his head around the fact that not only had humanity made first contact with an alien race but that they were apparently at war with them, only humans could pull off something like that.

He had just poured another round when CIC rung his quarters, Commander Gram was who he said he was and Nova, with Gram aboard, were to return to Serenity to meet up with elements of BSG 17 and a fleet intelligence officer.

"Okay then Colonel, plot the course and get us underway. Hopefully we'll be back at the anchorage before the next watch begins" Zorris placed the phone back in it's cradle then turned back to Gram "So, their shields can be dropped" he asked the former escortstar CO

"Yeah and we only did it with our small guns, however there's every possibility that while our nukes didn't affect their shields they damaged whatever emits the field. Still, we were just an escortstar and we managed to seriously damage both the hostile's major warships. In a major fleet engagement, depending on numbers, I can easily see us coming out on top" Gram replied with a grin before he took another sip of his ambrosia.

"If that's their equivalent of a battlestar group, a Mercury would have probably have a good run at taking out every single on. Send the battlestar after the two capital ships and deploy viper squadrons with raptor support to bring down the escorts, if they use dorsal guns for their heavy ship to ship combat and the Merc can get side by side with their ships then it's game set and match to us" Zorris pointed out

The two commanders sat in silence for a moment, analysing their little assessment, the silence was broken though when Zorris asked "Hmm, you wonder if we had shields like that our armour would be as thin as theirs?"

"What do you mean?"

"Well, the reason the Quorum keeps pushing for more escortstars as opposed to Valkyries is that their hull is cheaper to build, not as thick, they're smaller and there are less composites presents, if we had shields we wouldn't need as thick a hull for the same level of protection"

"Yeah, I guess you're right there, but still Guardian showed the usefulness of a thick hull and shields or no shields I see a lot of new battlestars on the horizon. If we gear up for a proper war, we'll probably get so many ships into service by the end it'll probably be easier just to refit the whole fleet. Shields and DEWs for everyone"

Zorris raised his glass "To what soldiers do best when the politicians take our funding"

Gram smiled and clinked his glass against his comrade's "To battlestars with shields and laser cannons" after he drained the glass he asked "What's our ETA to the anchorage"

"An hour at our current speed"

"Well then how about another round"

Zorris poured it and they continued talking. Within hours, the very core of the human race would be shaken.

**Turian Dreadnaught Palveran, ****On Station Near Mass Relay, 20 Minutes Later**

General Septimus looked like he was about to explode "These kinds of results are unacceptable Commander. Two cruisers suffer heavy damage that will put them in drydock for weeks, a frigate is destroyed by a ship without any kind of shield technology and another is destroyed by a self destruct"

Vakarian stood ramrod straight, this wasn't the first he'd been brought in front of a senior officer in this kind of mood. It was usually best to just go along with whatever they said until they got it out of their system, then give a reply that painted his actions in slightly less of a bad light, in his superior's eyes.

"And then, you tell me that you still haven't found any hard data on their military capabilities beyond the actions of on large vessel which gave an excellent account of itself in this race's first battle with us, I doubt our next engagement will be nearly as successful."

"Yes sir, however sir, our actions during the battle were based on the assumptions of the late Captain Terranus and in the case of the Novis, there was no way to have known about the self destruct sequence. In fact sir based upon sensor analysis it appears that the crew merely jury rigged their remaining nuclear weapons. However sir, if you look at slide eighteen, you'll see that we've discovered charts in the base, that point to this race only possessing twelve planets, all within the same four star solar system. With our current force we could easily overtake any kind of defences now that we know to use our superior main guns and with additional forces, mostly ground troops we can quickly overrun this race and integrate them into the galactic community, safely and with minimum hassle beyond the next few months"

The general stood there for a moment, composing, then replied in a much softer voice "Yes, you are quite correct. I apologise commander, my reaction was unbecoming of my rank. However your flotilla still needs a commander and although little good came of it your performance so far leads me to believe that you fit the flotilla commander's role perfectly. Once we are done here report to the Renix. The cruiser and the 3rd flotilla are now yours to command"

Vakarian snapped into a salute "Thankyou sir. However if I may ask sir what is our next course of action, I believe it would be unwise to let these Hoomens make the first move, they know we're here and they could possibly come against us with enough numbers to cripple our fleet long enough for them to bring in additional forces and finish us off"

"While going over the civilian computers, the intelligence section discovered several files from something akin to our codex" Spetimus replied "These were leftover files from the last time their former owners accessed the Hoomens equivalent of the extranet, using them we have identified one world in their home system which is apparently the home of their central military command and numerous refuelling and resupply stations and training centres for their military, although there are installations on other worlds this planet possesses the largest concentration. The plan is to assault this world in a series of quick strikes, then land troops and when the Hoomen's send their fleet to respond we strike their other worlds, mainly for reconnaissance but captain's will be authorised to attack targets of opportunity"

Vakarian saluted again "Thankyou sir, I'll go check on my vessels"

Septimus returned his salute "Don't let me down Captain"

**Colonial News Broadcast, Streaming From Caprica****, The Next Day**

"Well Genna, what can you tell us about the situation on Picon" the network anchor asked

"Well, the Fleet has refused all requests for details so far, but so far what we've seen here is a massive sortie of fleet units, including Picon's ground based fighter squadrons and a general callup of the reserve forces has been issued, I was actually told by the wife of an escortstar's commander that BSG-18, which wasn't due to leave the Leonidas Shipyards for another month, has just called in all their crews for immediate combat sortie.

Rumours are flying around here, some people are saying that this is just a surprise drill, some have theorised that the Cylons have returned others have even gone as far to say that the fleet has made first contact with an alien race" the network's agent on Picon reported

"Thankyou Genna, ladies and gentlemen we're now going to cross to Dianna Seelix who is present at the Ministry of Defence for a government press release. Dianna"

The screen that had just shown Genna on Picon, switched over to the press room at the Ministry of Defence. Dianna wasn't visible as the camera was trained on the podium at the end of the room, however rather then the usual non-com who made these presentations was the Secretary of Defence himself. Rumoured to be a shy man, to date he had only ever issued a few brief statements and let Colonel Udina, the fleet's chief of public relations, handle long question sessions.

He adjusted the microphone on the podium and the chatter of the two dozen journalists died away.

"Humans of the Twelve colonies. I'm here today to relay both marvellous and dreadful news and I would ask if you would hold your questions until the end of this presentation"

On the screen behind the Secretary, a picture of the Object appeared.

"Two months ago, a battlestar on a routine patrol mission of the Armistice Line, discovered this object. Obviously it is not human in origin. Several leading scientist were immediately dispatched to study the Object, which several of them dubbed the Fork. One week ago, with authorisation from Admiral Nagala, a team boarded the object to discover more about it, in doing so they inadvertently activated it."

The picture changed to show the now clearly active object, meanwhile many of the reporters began muttering amongst themselves as to what this could mean, the more astute among them quickly drew the connection between this "alien" object and the recent fleet deployments.

"Three days ago, six alien vessels arrived at the object using a previously unknown form of faster then light travel and promptly attacked and destroyed the escortstar Guardian, Colonial Heavy 281 and the small base we had begun building on the moon the object orbited. The only survivors from the attack are a few dozen crewmen who made it off the Guardian before it was destroyed aboard the ship's refuelling shuttle and raptors"

There was a pause as the Secretary shuffled his speech "At twelve, eighteen pm yesterday, those survivors made contact with Battlestar Nova, which promptly returned the closest fleet base, Serenity Anchorage, to report on the situation. As of four am, President Adar signed an executive order allowing the military to mobilise its forces and to take all steps necessary to defend the colonies until the Quorum can convene and decide upon a unified political course of action. Now are there any questions"

At first no one moved, as far as the colonials had known was no life in the universe other then humans and, if you counted them, Cylons, they had been raised to believe that. But slowly one by one people began to raise there hands, oddly though it was deathly quiet most unlike the usual low roar that could by called the hallmark of conferences like this.

The Secretary pointed to a young man in the second row, who asked "Sir, Sam Traytis, Gemmenon Herald. Do we know why they attacked?"

"That is unknown at this time, however BSG 8 under Commander Vincerry is preparing to jump out to the object and investigate, if possible they will attempt to make a peaceful second contact. But if attacked the Commander has authorisation to respond with maximum force" The secretary replied, then pointed to Dianna.

"Mr Secretary, if BSG 8 is heading out to this object. Why is the fleet massing above Picon, or patrolling all of the colonies"

"Well Ms Seelix, shortly after we began scrambling our forces the escortstar Carrion, which was headed back to Caprica at the time, had several dozen contacts pass through it's DRADIS field at speeds far in excess of light speed. Based on the opinions of the Guardian's DRADIS operator, we have determined that this is the aliens headed towards Picon at a rapid pace. Admiral Nagala expects to engage them within the hour also…"

"But, if it was travelling at faster then light speeds how was this fleet detected on DRADIS, wouldn't it be able to outrun the signal" Seelix interrupted

"If the fleet was moving away from the point of origin yes. However they were moving _towards_ Carrion, so while the vessel did pick up the alien fleet, by the time it showed up on screen's the alien fleet was long gone, happy" the Secretary replied with barely concealed anger at the interruption.

"Now if you don't mind I have to go but any remaining questions can be submitted to the fleet public relations office" The Secretary gathered his papers and left the podium to the screams of unanswered reporters. He really did hate this part of his job, public relations was the reason he had Udina.


	6. Chapter 6

**Battlestar Galactica, Currently In Deep Space, That Same Time**

Adama stood in the centre of the CIC by himself, Colonel Tigh was down in the rec room and the rest of the CIC staff were going about their daily routines as if nothing had changed. Everything had changed in the last few hours, they just didn't know it yet. In his hand, the Admiral held a message that he would have considered to be some kind of prank were he retiring, unfortunately though he was sure it was no prank and it seemed that some of his darkest fears regarding bulldog's discovery were now realised.

**TO HUSKER, COMMANDING OFFICER BSG-75**

**COLONIAL FORCES IN ORBIT OF THE OBJECT ENGAGED BY UNKNOWN ALIEN SPECIES, ENEMY ATTACK FORCE DETECTED EN ROUTE TO PICON, HOME FLEETS MOVING TO ENGAGE**

**ALL VESSELS ARE TO PREPARE FOR WARTIME OPERATIONS, CONDITION OMEGA**

**BEADVISED, ENEMY VESSELS POSSES CONSIDERABLE BOW WEAPONRY BUT MINIMAL BROADSIDE AND STERN CAPABILITY ENEMY VESSELS ALSO POSSES SOME KIND OF SHIELD AND A LASER BASED POINT DEFENSE SYSTEM USED AGAINST SINGLE SHIPS AND MISSILES**

**ADVISE USE OF NUCLEAR ORDINANCE AND MASSED SHELL FIRE IN ALL ENGAGEMENTS**

**BSG-75 ARE TO GATHER AT HUSKER'S DISCRETION AND RENDEZVOUS WITH BSG-9 AT HOPE'SFOLLY FOR COUNTER ATTACK UNDER FARMBOY WITHIN 100 HOURS OF RECEIVING THIS MESSAGE**

**ALL DETAILS REGARDING THE OBJECT ARE NOW CONSIDERED NON-CLASSIFIED**

**ALL NONHUMANVESSELS CONSIDERED FREETARGETS AT THIS TIME**

**ALL CIVILIAN VESSELS ENCOUNTERED ARE TO BE ADVISED TO RETURN TO HOME PORTS**

**FLEETCOM SENDS**

Hope's Folly, was a codename for one of several gathering points that had been designated throughout explored space. Their names and coordinates were known only to the fleet's admirals and a few trusted others so that rather then transmitting rendezvous coordinates across potentially monitored communications channels, battlegroups could organise gatherings at predetermined locations by just transmitting a word. Hope's Folly had been designated when serious study of the Object began and the location was roughly three quarters along the route from the Colonies to the Object. Farmboy was the call sign of Admiral James Dertan, the CO of BSG-9 and it appeared the Nagala had chosen to give him overall command over the counterattack. Dertan was a good appointment, being one of the few Cylon war veterans in the fleet who were still around due to their skills in battle as opposed to political manoeuvring, he'd also been in command of BSG-9 for almost four years now and had a wealth of experience at the fleet command level that Bill lacked.

Only one other person had seen the message and Dee was at her station, waiting for him to make some kind of announcement before she made any kind of comment to her shipmates, bless her.

After rereading the message he asked her "Dee, how far out are Leviathan and Roslin"

After rifling through some papers on her workstation for a moment, she replied "They should be approximately thirty three minutes out Sir, the Secretary's transport is being carried inside Leviathan's flight pod to take advantage of Leviathan's greater speed, they also reported that Apollo had run into them on his way out and is also aboard Leviathan"

"Very well then, inform Leviathan that I am authorising a tactical jump to our position, the Secretary's ship can come with us for now until she can safely return to Caprica, get the current positions of all our ships throughout the Colonies then get me ship wide, people will want to know what's going on" he then turned to Lieutenant Gaeta "Mr Gaeta, order the XO and the CAG to report to the bride and sound condition one throughout the ship"

"Aye sir" Gaeta replied as he grabbed a phone

"_Action__Stations,__Action__Stations,__Set__Condition__One__Throughout__The__Ship,__This__Is__Not__A__Drill,__XO__And__CAG__Please__Report__To__CIC,__Repeat__Action__Stations,__Action__Stations__…"_ Gaeta's voice rang through the old vessel.

Moments after the announcement, the recently promoted Major Novacek entered through the starboard hatch. Weaving through the command crew to the centre of the CIC he asked Adama "What's going on sir"

Bill handed him the message "Looks like we may have let the Chimera off its chain"

"Frak" he muttered as he scanned through the message "Guess they won't be naming anything after me after this, will they"

The Admiral smiled "No they probably won't"

"Sir" Dee interrupted "Privateer, Prometheus and Warhammer say they can reach us within six hours at sublight, however Pulsar is eighteen hours away and Regent and Protector are out at the Armistice Line, at sub light it will take them days to get hear, Commander Lorin requests permission to jump to our position"

"Hold on a moment Dee" Adama replied before he turned back to Bulldog "Bulldog, grab the books and work with Saul to find the closest depot where we can load up all of Galactica's magazines and anything Leviathan might not have. Dee" he turned back to her "send a message to all our ships, head to Hope's Folly, we'll meet them there once we've loaded up on munitions, hyperlight jumps are authorised to get there at best speed"

"Aye sir" Dee replied before turning back to her station

"You know Bill it's not just munitions we need, its planes" Bulldog told him while flipping through the book "We only have to light squadrons aboard and two and a half squadrons worth of pilot's, the best of whom is in the brig"

"I seem to recall a full squadron of viper's in the starboard flight pod" the Admiral replied

A look of realisation crossed Bulldog's face "Yeah we do, Okay I'll get Kara out of the brig and onto that with the Chief"

**Battlestar Atlantia, Orbiting Picon, That Same Time**

Admiral Nagala was standing in the midst of the chaotic maelstrom of the Atlantia on the eve of battle. Fleet officers ran back and forth, distributing manoeuvring orders too and from ships and fighter squadrons, others were calculating possible tactical FTL jumps, others yelled across the command ship's colossal CIC trying to get a number on just how many fighters they had up in the air and what they were loaded with.

In his mind, it was glorious. At his fingertips was the most powerful fleet ever assembled in the history of humankind, forty eight Valkyries, a dozen Mercuries, five Columbia IIs, twenty five escortstars and Atlantia, his own three kilometre long flagship. On top of that were over ten _thousand_ vipers, from both the ships and Picon's ground bases and almost three thousand raptors loaded with enough nukes to turn every planet in the Colonies into slag.

His will was the fleet's will, his wish their command and from the Atlantia's CIC he would lead the Colonial Fleet in its first proper fleet engagement since the Cylon war. This would be one for the history books, a battle that would be remembered for all time. This battle would make him immortal, for better or worse though he didn't know.

"Hopefully better" Nagala muttered to himself

As officers ran back and forth, every now and again one would give him a report, "Admiral, Pegasus reports that they won't have their network back online in time to join us", "Admiral Nagala all the reserve squadrons are now in the air", "Sir, fleet link is now ready for coordinated barrages", "Sir Galactica reports that they're headed to Ragnar to resupply"

Above the din of it though, one message reach the Admiral's ears that caused him to smile "Sir, the Scipio just jumped in from its picket. Turians are fifteen minutes out and closing"

Nagala turned to the Atlantia's communications officer and said "Get me fleet wide"

"Go ahead sir" the Captain replied as Nagala picked up a phone

"Now hear this. As you all know, we stand on a precipice. Our actions today will most likely shape the human race for centuries to come, whether we seize a great victory or fall to the jaws of defeat" He paused then continued, his voice calm and low "We now know that we are not alone in the universe and our enemy knows we're here, we don't know why they have chosen to attack us, but that doesn't matter right now"

He raised his voice and said "_Because__we__'__re__going__to__kill__them__all_"

The crew in the CIC cheered and Nagala was quite sure that similar scenes would be found on the other ships in throughout the fleet.

"Good luck to everyone and I'll see you afterwards"

**Turian Cruiser Renix, En Route To The Citadel Shipyards, That Same Time**

Although the damage done to the Renix had at first appeared superficial, closer inspection had revealed the true extent of the damage. The main superconductors for the cruiser's main gun had been burnt out by an energy surge and due to the damage done to the bow, rather then simply removing the components with a tug and inserting new ones, the conducters would have to be cut out with large industrial lasers, which would entail removing large sections of the ship situated around the gun, installing new coils and then rebuilding the removed sections, the work would confine the cruiser to the shipyards at the Citadel for almost two months.

However it was for that reason that Captain Vakarian had been chosen to transport the forty two POWs to the Citadel for interrogation by Fleet Intelligence officers. He had also been ordered to attempt an initial discussion with the prisoners. Most of them had been locked up in the hold since they were brought aboard several hours ago and hidden microphones had captured everything they said. Several minutes ago, his techs had informed him that they had a bare-bones translation system.

The hoomen that had been brought to the Renix's interrogation room was a male of its species. Like the rest of the Hoomens his body was covered in fur with thicker patches of a slightly darker colour around its armpits, genitalia and on top of its head. This one's head fur was a black colour and it was longer then most of the other's.

On the table next to the door to the interrogation room were the hoomen's personal effects, some kind of primitive computer pad and a bag containing a large number of pictures and writing printed on paper of all things. Although a voice translator had been worked out, one for written language was going to take a bit longer, so for now the informational contents of the bag remained a mystery.

Attaching the translator to his ear, Vakarian opened the door to the interrogation room and sat down at the table. This one was the third interrogation, the previous two hoomens had merely stated what the techs monitoring the microphones in the hold had identified as their names and some kind of identification code. They had selected this one because he was a civilian apparently while the others had been soldiers, some kind of ship board troopers akin to Quarian Marines, hopefully this prisoner would be willing to at least talk to him.

"So, what should I call you?" he asked the hoomen.

"Hmm, you can understand me" the hoomen replied, perhaps confused or curious, due to the imperfect translator rather then an organic voice laced with emotion, Vakarian heard what called a robotic Elcor "How is that"

Vakarian tapped his translator "A little translator the techies whipped up based on your people's speech patterns. It's not perfect but it will do for now"

"Incredible, your computer systems must be quite advanced, is that all raw processing power or did you use an AI"

"I'm no expert in computers but we didn't use an AI, the technology is illegal in Citadel Space, the things are far to dangerous to even research"

"Oh, great so humanities first contact is with more technophobes like… wait what's Citadel Space"

"The Citadel is an intergalactic government, Citadel space refers to the territory of the member species" Vakarian sighed, these people really were new to all this.

"Member species, so it's made up of several people under the one government"

"Almost, each species keeps their original government but defers to the Citadel council's authority, however you can also find governments outside of Citadel space that are made up of member species, however these tend to be criminals looking to escape the law"

The hoomen nodded at this. The hoomens lived on more then one planet, maybe they had a similar situation in some ways, one thing that never failed to surprise Vakarian was the way species reacted when faced with arrest, it was almost always the same. Stand and deny everything, or run to a star system where the law can't reach them, the latter were the ones who tended to get away.

"So if I may ask why did you attack us?" the hoomen asked him

"I'm sorry what did you say" Vakarian replied

"Why did you attack us, it's a simple question and one that I think is excellent in this situation"

"Well my vessel was on patrol when we detected a newly activated mass relay…"

"Wait, mass relay" the hoomen interrupted "Is that what you call the object we discovered"

"You mean the large object orbiting the planet we captured you over, yes we call them mass relays" Vakrian replied, annoyed at the hoomen's interruption "I assumed your people were pirates attempting to set up some kind of secret, off the books base, so we gathered the rest of our fleet and my flotilla engaged in a reconnaissance mission, when you attempted to jam our communications my commander took that as a hostile act and he ordered an attack on your forces, of course though now we know you are not pirates"

"Interesting" the human replied "so what's your next move then, seeing as we're not what you originally expected"

"Defeat your military, disband your government and safely integrate your people into the galactic community in a controlled manner to prevent abuse of technology that could prove disastrous for both your people and the Citadel in the long run" Vakarian replied matter of factly.

The hoomen who had been nodding his head in thought a moment before, jolted, stared straight at the Captain and asked "What, what makes you so confident that we'll just roll over and let you take over"

"Actually we fully intend for you to fight against us, my commander's plan is to overwhelm your primitive space fleet and bombard military installations giving your government an incentive to surrender"

"And what makes you think my people's fleet will just roll over and let you take over our worlds, for all it's failings my species has a tendency to fiercely resist occupation, even if the fleet fails I can say with some certainty that you could be looking at a full blown insurgency"

"Well, despite the unexpected deployment of nuclear weapons my battlegroup did handle your mini dreadnought rather well, considering the hundreds of ships we're about to jam down your fleet's throats I think my people's victory is almost assured, even if civilians resort to guerrilla tactics"

"Mini dreadnaught?" the hoomen replied, again with a look of what could be confusion on his face "That was an escortstar, the smallest, least armoured and least heavily armed ship in our fleet, the fleet's commanders didn't want to build them because they thought they were to weak"

A chill ran down Vakarian's spine, if what the hoomen said was true then the General could be walking into a far more dangerous situation then he had originally predicted and he was taking most of the sector fleet with him. Of course though he could be lying to try and force them to halt their attack, on the other hand though it didn't hurt to just send out a warning, he was just relaying intelligence, what the General chose to do with it was his own decision.

Abruptly standing and walking to the door Vakarian activated his radio link to the bridge "Comms, send a message out to the General, warn him that the enemy's military capabilities may be far greater then originally aniticipated, the heavy cruiser destroyed near the relay was one of their smaller vessels"

Vakarian then turned back to the hoomen and said "I'll be back in a minute"

**Onboard A Stealth Raider, In Orbit Of Picon 10 Minutes Later**

The One, known as Cavil rarely had any enjoyable moments these days, once on a mission to the colonies a colleague of his fake identity's had said that he looked stressed and while he had at times told himself that it was the fault of his creators, giving him this old worn out body, he could not deny that one day his deceptions and the results would catch up with him, either in the form of his current body suffering a heart attack or his siblings catching on to his activities. Although if the latter occurred it probably would be better to be boxed as his siblings realized that they could easily work around their precious democracy.

This situation was an example, he hadn't even had a proper plan until he saw the emergency news broadcast. He'd rushed off with the thought of using the virus against the colonies when they were attacked. But by the time he was hiding on Gemenon's largest moon he realised that he really hadn't thought things through, especially if the aliens attempted to help the colonials after he launched the virus and then the Cylons would have tipped their hand and final victory would be impossible.

But then like a sign from God, another One monitoring colonial communications showed him the broadcast and immediately Cavil plan formed. Even now their stealth raider, based on stolen Colonial technology, was floating near the Colonial fleet preparing to engage these aliens.

Placing his hand on the interface panel Cavil sent the order. The Cylons would have their vengeance in one form or another and better yet he would be here to watch.

Turning to the raider's window he watched as the engines of dozens of colossal warships and tiny fighters, flickered and died. Although he had always been an advocate that the human models should act more like machines, Cavil couldn't help but feel a deep sense of satisfaction, the only thing that would make this better was a bowl of popcorn.

**Battlestar Leviathan, Preparing To Jump To Ragnar Anchorage, That Same Time**

Commander Adrian Vex had been sent to take over the Galactica from Admiral Adama after he handed over Leviathan to the old man, it was a job normally reserved for Commanders at the end of their careers and those about to take command of their own battlestars. Vex was part of the latter category, in a few months, probably sooner now, with wartime production ramp ups, he'd be getting his own Valkyrie, for now though he was stuck ferrying ships around the Colonies, having spent weeks commanding everything from new escortstars to old Columbias he felt that he was quickly becoming an expert on all the ships in the fleet.

"So you think we'll find everything we'll need here Major" he asked the pilot who had come across from Galactica.

"Yes sir, Ragnar was constructed in the days before FTL and modern artificial gravity. The anchorage has enough supplies onboard to support two dozen ships for months, stored in spinning sections according to the book" the Major replied.

Vex nodded, at first he had been annoyed with Bulldog being sent over. But the man had quickly proven his worth, Vex would have bet that the pilot knew even more about running a battlestar in combat conditions then he did and the Major had given him a quick rundown in combined battlestar-fighter operations during the trip to Ragnar, if they ran into trouble and Galactica bought it, he'd need it.

"Sir, Galactica reports they have our jump coordinates ready, we can follow them at our leisure" the comms officer reported. Normally a battlestar like Leviathan would have generated it's own coordinates but with their skeleton crew they had no one capable of plotting the coordinates for a Mercury class battlestar, even with computer assistance.

The DRADIS console beeped, Glactica had just jumped. Walking over to the Navigators console, Vex opened the sealed container and removed the glowing jump key.

"Well Major" Vex said to Bulldog as he inserted the key "Let's go find some bullets"

**Boar Lead, In Orbit Of Picon, That Same Time**

"All Boars this is Lead, form up on me, we're going to go cover Olympia and stay ready for action, watch your corners for frak's sake keep your guns hot" Captain Delton ordered.

Captain Marcus Delton was a weekend flyer, a reservist. He'd served five years in the fleet as a viper pilot, flying the old Mk5s, before being forced out during the last decade of military cutbacks. Unlike most in his position though, he'd been able to score a reserve posting, something highly coveted among ex-fleet pilots who enjoyed their jobs.

Due to his rank when he left the service he had been given command of the 134th "Boar" Fighter Squadron, a collection of Mk5 Vipers and Mk3 Raptors. During his time running the motley group of Lawyers, Farmhands and Doctors on their training days, he had seen more then one bad situation, but this one was definitely the worst. An enemy fleet was closing in on Picon and somehow they'd managed to shut down the fleet like flicking a switch, just like the Cylons had done at the start of their little revolution forty years ago. Nobody was even communicating, eighty three ships, almost the entire defensive arm of the fleet, were just floating in space like old junk, Lieutenant Quin had summed up the sight best muttering "It's like the boneyard".

The only birds still running were a few of the reserve squadrons from Picon and a small number of scattered viper jocks, many of whom reported that they could see their fellow pilots wrestling with unresponsive controls, that had been ordered to form up on the Chimera, one of three battlestars still operational, the other two were the battlestars Olympia and Victory.

The first two were Columbia II class battlestars, the precursor to the newer Mercuries and the second class of battlestars built following the Cylon war, although well past their prime and nearing their decommissioning dates, and hence not carrying the newest fleet equipment, they could still give your average baseship a serious run for its money. Delton had no doubt that they could give a few frakkers from beyond known stars a bit of a migraine. The Victory was a Valkyrie, normally part of BSG 62 under Admiral Cain, and it had been about to go into drydock (some terms never died) over Scorpio alongside her flagship when all this happened, apparently they didn't even their entire computer system up and running, lucky for them.

Commander Neros, the Chimera's CO, had immediately taken charge of the situation and had ordered all the functioning squadrons to rendezvous with whichever of the three battlstars was closest and to switch over to their tactical communications frequencies, they would be their homes for this battle, however short it was.

"Boars, Olympia. We're deploying raptors to head over to some of the non-functional ships, they're heading out on pilot plotted vectors, so watch your DRADIS, the last thing we need right now is a collision. " the Olympia's Air Controller radioed.

"Roger AC. How many birds are combat ready" Delton asked

"Only 234 vipers and 41 raptors, including our reserves, but most of them are scattered to Hades and back. At this point the alien's will be on top of us by the time we have a combat formation"

"Okay then" Delton replied before he switched to his squadron frequency "Boars let's go show these frakkers the problem with trying to take our skies"

Gunning the turbo, Delton brought his viper under the Olympia's bow head before settling into a holding pattern just forward of the ships bow. It was hard, but he could see the faint shapes of the enemy vessels in the distance as they closed in on the helpless Colonials.

**Battlestar Chimera, In Orbit Of Picon, That Same Time**

"Weapons grid to full power, standby fighter suppression barrage" Colonel Ellis, the Chimera's XO, ordered

"Raise our bow 18 digress, sound standby for combat acceleration and shell impacts" Commander Neros told the helmsman,

"Sir" the Comms officer chimed in "Two dozen heavy freighters are being gathered on Caprica with an escort from Battlestar Maleficent"

"What's their ETA"

"Forty minutes with their jump drives sir"

Neros grimaced, with over a hundred enemy vessels closing in on his three, they'd probably be dead by the time reinforcements and evacuation arrived. Even if they did manage to hold out for that long though it would still take several hours to get everyone off every single ship, during which it would be easy for the aliens to crush them.

"Enemy's firmly in detection sphere now, and they're packed tight enough that if we throw some shells their way at the very least they'll be forced to break formation even if we don't do to much damage" Ellis told the Commander

"True, let's warm up the guns and give them a warm welcome" Neros turned to the Comms officer "Copy a message to the Olympia and the Victory, form up on us and prepare for a disruption barrage, helm shift us ninety degrees to port. Captain Palleon ready our heavy guns, hold off on using the nukes, I want sure hits when we use them"

"Aye sir" the Captain replied

As he felt the colossal bulk of his ship shift to present it's business end to the enemy, Neros had a terrible feeling about the coming battle.

He had a feeling that the fall of the Colonies had begun.

**Author's Notes**

Well here's the latest chapter, I'm sorry about leaving this as a bit of a cliffhanger but with the length of this chapter and the fact that I hadn't updated in a while I thought it would be better to just split this chapter into two parts, as it is this is currently the longest chapter so far. Still, seeing as so many of you were reviewing with messages of "The Turians are going to get their arses kicked" I'm going to assume I took you all by surprise.

Twilight Dragon God-Yes their is a bit of a lack of view from the Turians beyond General Septimus and Captain Vakarian but that will change in the chapter after the next when the discovery of the humans is reported to the council.

Undying Hunter-No I'm afraid there won't be an Adama maneuver over Palveran, but I do have a scenario planned that would involve it.

Now I'm in the midst of my end of year exams but expect the next chapter soon. Until then then though there are three things you can do.

**1-Scroll down another few inches**

**2-Click that button in the middle of the page, the review button**

**3-Right me a review**


	7. Chapter 7

**Battlestar Galactica, Approaching Ragnar Anchorage, Five Minutes Later**

"Well this is seriously fracked up Bill" Tigh muttered without looking up from the report they had received from Picon "It's just like the war all over again"

"Yeah, only this time we have ships that aren't carrying mechanical time bombs" the Admiral replied, referring to the Cylon units that had been onboard warships that had proved resistant to hacking at the start of their rebellion that then proceeded to massacre the human crews, as he picked up the phone that had been linked to the PA systems on both Galactica and Leviathan. Currently only a few onboard the two battlestars had any knowledge of what was going on but rumours were already circulating and Bill thought that the disaster over Picon needed to be known.

"_This is the Admiral"_ he began _"Several minutes ago, this ship received word of an attack against our homeworlds by an alien fleet of unknown origin. They were detected en route to Picon with a large force and the majority of the home fleets under the command of Admiral Nagala moved to engage them. However reports indicate that the enemy has managed to disable most of the ships present."_

Adama took a breath then continued, it was so quiet you could probably hear a micro meteor strike the hull _"Although many of our comrades in arms have fallen before our new enemy, we have not. Within the hour we will have ammunition and then it will be our mission to launch an offensive against our enemy's closest known position at the edge of explored space. We are now the first line of humanity's defence against the god's knows what. You've trained for this, you're ready for this, further updates as we get them, that is all"_

As he placed the phone back in its cradle the Admiral eyes wandered over the CIC crew, all of them were staring at him, probably in shock or fear and looking to him, the old man, for guidance. What guidance could he give them though, if this had been the Cylons, an enemy that the entire fleet had spent forty years preparing for, he could at least say something like 'Trust your shipmates and aim the red eye', but he didn't even know what these aliens looked like and beyond the knowledge that they had some kind of shields and were apparently good at cylon style cyber warfare he knew very little about their military tactics.

Luckily though Saul was there, as always, to pull him out of the fire, shouting "What, is everyone off duty all of a sudden, we have a war to prepare for, let's move it people"

As the CIC's usual din resumed, the Admiral whispered "Thanks Saul"

"Eh, this is why I like being XO, I get to boss the lowers around but I don't have to make speeches and write the condolence letters" the Colonel replied with a grin.

"Sirs" Lieutenant Gaeta interrupted "We're entering the eye of the storm"

**Battlestar Chimera, Forming A Perimeter, That Same Time**

"All heavy batteries, engage four round volley, try to focus your rounds on specific areas but I want a nice even spread" Neros spoke into the phone.

As soon as he put it down the dull rumble of heavy gun fire reached the CIC, on DRADIS the small symbols representing the Victory and Olympia had small flashes to show their own guns firing at the hostile vessels. Although the aliens were out of the range required for accurate shooting this volley was mainly designed to test their reaction times, speed and DRADIS range.

And unfortunately the alien ships began to scatter at twice the range a battlestar would have detected incoming fire at and when they scattered they moved like a well drilled viper squadron, with what Neros assumed were individual battlegroups breaking off from the main fleet in formation although to his surprise one of the escorts was destroyed by the volley, perhaps it didn't have it's shield up. However the surprising thing was the speed at which they moved, if they chose to approach Picon at that speed they'd be over the fleet within three minutes, instead they were choosing to approach at a more leisurely pace, but why, perhaps they were gathering intelligence or trying to find out if any ships were still active after their hacking, or maybe their dodge had made use of some kind of manoeuvring burn that taxed their engines.

"Commander, Raptor two has managed to manually open an airlock on the Manticore and make contact with the crew, they are requesting shuttles to start evacuating" Colonel Ellis

"Dispatch them and send the rescued crews down to the planet" Neros replied then turned to the helmsman, who was actually a woman, "Bring us to a full stop and prepare for manoeuvring burns"

"On it sir" she replied

"Shuttles away commander four minutes till they reach the Manitcore, six minutes until the begin evacuations" Ellis told him. Neros nodded, but it he knew that the Chimera's small complement of shuttles would be unable to evacuate even half of the Mantocore's crew before the enemy was upon them.

"Energy spikes, enemy ships are firing, no rounds are heading for us it's all aimed at the rest of the fleet sir, Atlantia and her group are going to take the brunt of it," the DRADIS operator said

"Get our Raptors out of the impact area and stand by to return fire. Initiate suppression fire with all defensive batteries. Heavy guns stand by for fire mission, relay to the other battlestars" Neros ordered. Looking at the DRADIS

"Sir enemy fleet will be in range in five minutes, fighters are launching from enemy mediums and the flagship sir" the DRADIS operator reported

"Well they're in a large enough group that we'll be able to hit them at this range" Neros replied as he picked up the phone "all guns begin fire mission, primary targets are the medium vessels, all defensive batteries are to engage in a saturation barrage"

**Turian Dreadnaught Palveran, Moving To Engage Enemy Battlegroup, One Minute Earlier**

As the frigate Discovery went up in flames General Septimus shook his head, he had placed that ship at the back of his formation simply because its shields had been suffering malfunctions lately. Normally he would have sent the ship back to a shipyard to get it checked out but after he had received Captain Vakarian's report from the interrogation of the human prisoner he had merely shifted it to the back of the fleet's formation, close to the Palveran, to serve as a rear echelon bombardment platform, a mistake that the ship's crew had paid for with their lives. Fortunately he would have a chance to pay the hoomens back in full.

The size of the hoomen vessels had been quite the surprise, his race had the largest number of dreadnaughts in the known galaxy in their fleet and that force numbered at only thirty, yet here were over eighty contacts, each of which ran from just under one kilometre to two that measured a colossal three kilometres and this was just the one world, the hoomens couldn't know of his plans, so this couldn't be their entire fleet. But if this was just one world, who knew what the rest of their fleet was like? Their economy couldn't be large enough to support such a fleet, although twelve worlds within the same star cluster would be considered the crown jewel of any species' empire, twelve worlds within the same solar system, well he had never even considered the possibility that such a marvel could exist. Control of such a system could make any species a major economic power.

"General, only three contacts appear to be active, we may have stumbled upon some kind of scrapping yard" a sensor operator reported

"G-Good" Septimus stammered before composing himself "continue to monitor. Communications, vector four flotillas onto those targets, I want them destroyed by the time we're ready to begin our full scale assault"

As soon as the sensor operator had said "three" Septimus had breathed a sigh of relief, around then three large dreadnaughts he could actually fathom a race maintaining and fielding. The young officer was probably right about this being some kind of scrapping yard, after all, Septimus himself knew that if you took all the old unscrapped dreadnaughts the Turians had at their disposal and put them on top of their current vessels then they could possibly field more then a hundred dreadnaught type ships.

"_Attention All Crew, Brace For Firing"_ the PA system announced, most of the crew would have already been ready for the vibrations and shocks the main gun produced after combat alert was sounded, but regulations were regulations.

Grabbing the railing that ran around his raised platform, Septimus braced himself as a trio of _thumps_, rang out and the ship shook. Had he looked out the window he would have seen several cruisers performing a similar manoeuvre.

"Rounds on route to targets, Alpha and Delta groups report ready for their speed run" the Communications officer reported

"Very good" Septimus replied, his voice once more full of confidence "Inform the fleet to prepare to…"

"Incoming rounds, everyone brace for incoming fire" the Palveran's LADAR operator yelled, moments before the ship shook twice from the hoomen's heavy shells.

"Report" Septimus yelled to no one in particular

"General, it appears to be another diversionary barrage" the LADAR operator replied "trying to make us break formation, however we've lost and a frigate and a cruiser is damaged, shuttles are moving to evacuate, several other vessels have been hit however they only took shield damage, no hull impacts"

Turning to the Palveran's defensive systems operator he asked "How are we holding up"

"Our shields were drained by almost four percent, somehow though they're still draining, slowly but they're draining" he replied

"According to a frigate commander it's some kind of projectile based point defence system" the communications officer interjected "we're taking only a few impacts, but it's hitting some of the forward pickets quite heavily, several fighters have already had their shields downed"

Septimus just nodded and said "Shuffle the current pickets regularly with cruisers using full power shields, the hoomen's weapons are exceedingly effective at ripping apart unshielded targets"

Septimus had found hoomen weapons quite interesting, although at first glance they appeared to be simple, primitive ballistic weapons after taking one of their pistols, which mounted some kind of explosive munitions launcher, apart he had discovered that it used a small magnetic accelerator to give their rounds an extra boost of speed as they left the barrel. It was a most interesting design that had given their soldiers just enough firepower that, when working together, they could bring down shielded Turian troops. He had ordered an examination of the cruiser… no escort, he reminded himself, that Captain Vakarian's group had destroyed and the engineers had discovered that the vessels main guns operated on the same principle. Although the rounds achieved nowhere near the speeds that his vessels' main guns could and didn't deliver half as much kinetic energy onto the target, their weight and sheer numbers made up for it although, according to one of the engineers he had questioned, a single round from the Palveran's main gun would punch straight through an unshielded frigate, but a hoomen round would probably snap it in half.

"Sir, the flotillas are about to engage the three enemy targets, the frigates are reporting numerous fighters" the Communications officer reported

**Battlestar Chimera, That Same Time**

"Raise our starboard side eight degrees, prepare to engage enemy escorts, heavy guns only and point defence, once our third barrage is away, vector fighters to engage with strafing runs only, no nukes at this point. One pass each, then head for the main body of the enemy fleet and fire every nuke they have, combat raptors are to assist them" Commander Neros told his crew

"Sir, enemy escorts are now in accurate fire range" the DRADIS operator reported

Picking up the phone, Neros said "Engage fire mission"

"Affirmative sir" the soldier on the other end replied "engaging targets"

Turning to Colonel Ellis, Neros said "Put the feed from our forward cameras on the table"

Ellis nodded and the map of Picon that had been on the table moments before was replaced by a view of the incoming alien escorts, as seen by Chimera's forward cameras. Dozens of glowing cannon rounds shot onto the screen from behind the camera's field of view from the three defending battlestars, impacting on the targets but causing no kind of visible damage beyond a slight blue shimmer around the tiny vessels. After a few volleys though the shields of five ships collapsed and another volley put those few out of commission entirely.

"Commit vipers" the Commander ordered

Moments after he said it the few remaining vipers and combat raptors available appeared on the screen, visible only because of their glowing thrusters and exhaust trails. Pressing a few keys, Neros zoomed in on one small groups of Mk7s as they began firing their cannons, most of their rounds missed at first but as the fighters got closer more and more began to hit home. As the vipers swarmed the enemy vessels, several of the escort's shields began to fail and after that they quickly began to sprout holes in their thin hulls, however enemy defensive lasers pulsed out and managed to claim the lives of several pilots, the energy weapons destroying their fighters so quickly that only three of a few dozen pilots managed to eject.

"Sir, enemy escorts are firing on us" the DRADIS operator said

"Sound impact alarms and have DC teams standby to respond" Neros replied "As soon as our birds have finished their strafing runs, resume hitting those escorts with our cannons"

The Chimera shuddered as enemy rounds impacted on the hull, about a dozen of them, a second later the mighty ship shuddered again as all her guns fired off their response, only this time they didn't let up, the crews would keep firing until either the enemy retreated out of range or they went up in a fireball.

"Damage report" Neros shouted as a few computer screens, including Damage Control, exploded in a bright display of sparks and glass or shut down.

"One second Jim" Ellis replied as he picked up a phone "This is the XO, what's the DC team's assessment"

The Colonel nodded twice then turned back to the Commander, a scowl on his face "Five sections on A deck completely exposed to vacuum with no survivors, they've been sealed off, three sections on D and four on B with minor breaches, Chief Panaka has his team working to seal them, and the bastards hit a pair of defensive cannons, both are write offs. The entire starboard side looks like someone took a huge jackhammer to it"

"What about Olympia and Victory" the Commander asked

"Olympia is pretty much the same as us, but Victory took the brunt and apparently it shows, one of their flight pods is completely wrecked and they lost half of their main guns in that one salvo, added to that they lost both FTLs and their main reactor may have sprung a leak"

Neros pinched the bridge of his nose, those kinds of losses were too extreme for what they were facing, although he had had some small trace of hope up until now, they simply couldn't hold out any longer. Without serious reinforcements they were well and truly frakked unless… no, he couldn't do that, he probably end up condemning thousands, however he might end up saving thousands more, it was probably the better course to take then just slugging it out at these ranges.

"Sir, our planes are reaching their launch point" an officer behind the Commander said, interrupting his chain of thought

"Good, are any enemy fighters moving to intercept them" Neros replied, his mind still half focused on the beginnings of a proper strategy

"Yes sir, however our birds will have launched and fallen back before they can intercept, the only danger is from the escorts between us"

"Once they've launched bring all of them back to the ships and load their standard fighter combat packages, if they have a chance they can strafe an enemy escort but tell them to watch for those lasers" Neros said as he glanced at the camera display, none of the enemy escorts appeared to have any shields left and although they were attempting to avoid the firepower the battlestars were throwing out, the defensive batteries, with their high velocity rounds, were slowly ripping them to shreds, most had exposed decks and only two were manoeuvring with the same gusto they had been previously, the enemy's first thrust against Picon seemed to have been repelled for the moment. Then the Victory started to drift quite rapidly out of formation.

"What's going on with the Victory" Neros asked no one in particular

"One moment sir" the Lieutenant running communications replied as he pressed an earphone against his head "Victory suffered a massive power surge from their damaged reactor sir, it started several fires and their XO was forced to vent several sections they'll be back in position soon"

Neros nodded in acknowledgement then, one eye on the display, he grabbed a piece of paper and scribbled a quick series of numbers. Pressing a few keys, he switched the display back to its regular DRADIS mode just in time to see the lead squadron, a reserve unit if he wasn't mistaken, launch it's first missiles. Seconds later more Vipers began to launch, followed by the Raptors spread out amongst the large formation. Within seconds hundreds, probably over a thousand, nuclear warheads were speeding towards the main body of the enemy fleet, the tracks on the display leaving the Commander's view of the battlespace a confusing mess of lines as the missiles continued towards their target.

As they closed on the main alien fleet missiles began to drop off the DRADIS, probably from the enemy's laser defence system. It started with one or two at a time, but then the missiles began to disappear by the dozens, luckily for the human's though dozens more got through, like with the intercepts it started with the ones and two before dozens of nuclear missiles began detonating along the leading edge of the alien's formation at once. As the heat and radiation began to spread out it obscured the Chimera's DRADIS readings and hopefully the enemy's sensor system as well, it ought to with all the radiation and vaporised metal that the warheads would have thrown in between the two forces.

Although the Fleet had never developed its military lasers to the point that they could be deployed on warships, as before the Cylon war a lot of the experimental laser control systems had relied on primitive AIs, the number of missiles dropping off the screen was remarkable if it was combined with the Fleet's current missile defence system, filling the space around a ship obscene amounts of high explosives and metal, it would make quite and effective defensive barrier.

"Helm" Neros said "Move us behind the disabled ships then kill our engines, Comms inform the Olympia to do the same then prepare to transmit a message on the universal military channel"

"I, ah, yes sir" the helmsman replied as Neros walked over to the communications station

"Lieutenant" Neros said as he handed the young man the scrap of paper "Inform all vessels within one jump of Picon to jump to these coordinates exactly, and emphasise the exactly part, five minutes after receiving this message, with the majority of their guns angled towards Picon. Tell them not to wait until they've established contact with us, just acquire targets and fire"

"Yes sir but sir are you sure this is the best thing to do, I mean, there's a frackload of things that could go wrong with that kind of plan" the Lieutenant replied

"I didn't ask your opinion _Lieutenant_" Neros replied, his voice low "now we're operating on a time table here so if you don't mid following orders"

**Battlestar Galactica, Docked At Ragnar Anchorage, That Same Time**

"Roger that sir, we show a hard seal as well" Crew Chief Galen Tyrol told the Old Man

"Go find me some bullets Chief" the Admiral replied

"Copy that sir" the mechanic said before turning to his team "Alright we're secure, let's move out"

A marine spun the flywheel and the airlock door opened, with a groan that was common on Galactica, to reveal the rust covered walls of an installation that probably hadn't seen any kind of serious maintenance work since the Cylon war.

Spreading out quickly through the station, the party made their way to the main magazine, Ragnar's main reserve of munitions. The door was old and rusted, but once unlocked two marines were able to easily swing it open.

Quickly looking the room over, the Chief said "Alright people let's be quick about this, Cally find a genny get some lights on in here"

"Yes Chief" she replied

"Let's find out where the lift is, get it fired up and someone check the internal communications, see if Leviathan's guys are on their way here"

As the team began to spread out through the room, Tyrol's light flashed against what looked like a pair of shoes, focusing his light back on them he found that it was _indeed_ a pair of shoes, attached to a pair of legs which were connected to a torso which had arms that were currently holding a gun which, although shaking was pointing squarely at him.

Almost unfortunately for the mystery man though the marines noticed him as well and raised their rifles, however Tyrol raised and hand and yelled "Everybody hold fast"

"I don't want trouble" the blonde man, who was sweating profusely, said "But I'm not going to jail you understand me, I am _not_ going to jail"

"Nobody's taking you to jail, just calm down" the Chief replied

"Fracking right you're not" the man muttered

"Look we're not the police we're not here to arrest you now put your gun down"

"Yeah, maybe so who the hell are you"

"We're from Colonial Fleet, we just came to get some equipment from the station, to get back in the fight"

"What fight"

"You don't know"

"Know what"

"There's a war on, give me your weapon"

"You think I'm stupid or something is that it you think I'm stupid you expect me to believe that" the man said before screaming "I want passage out of here, on a safe transport ship, with an untraceable jump system" he then took a deep breath and said "Okay" then again screamed "Now"

The man was obviously a nut, and the Chief had seen enough crime shows to know that at this point he'd either give up or he'd pull the trigger and unfortunately he was right in the weapon's sights and Tyrol did not plan to die before he even got into combat.

When the Chief replied his voice was low but as he went on his voice began to rise and his anger rose to the surface "Look I don't have time to argue with you, so here's the deal we've got over two thousand people on that ship now you think you can shoot every single one of us fine but if not, get the hell out of my way"

The man did nothing for a moment and Tyrol prepared to meet the ferryman, then the man pointed his weapon at the ceiling. Two marines ran forward to grab him and Tyrol told a marine sergeant next to him "Take him back to Galactica and chuck him in the brig, if he tries anything shoot him"

"Got it Chief" the Sergeant replied as he and two others pulled the blonde man out of the armoury.

**Turian Dreadnaught Palveran, Approaching Picon, That Same Time**

As the sensor operator had screamed about the huge amount of incoming nuclear ordinance, Septimus's hands had gripped the railing so hard that his knuckles went pale. On the main display he watched as GARDIAN lasers picked off enemy missiles by the dozens but it was not enough and Septimus's grip only grew tighter as bright flashes cluttered the display, hiding ships from view, blinding sensors with heat and vaporised metal and filling communications with static as their tiny section of space was flooded by electromagnetic energy. The Palveran rocked for almost ten seconds but the crew within felt nothing as its mass effect fields compensated for the shockwave of dozens of explosions along the front of the Turian fleet.

After closing his eyes for several seconds, Septimus took a deep breath. He should have realised that those fighters would have nukes aboard, they had after all been the primary means of delivery against the scouting group near the mass relay.

"How long until we can get a damage report from the forward sections of the fleet" the General asked

"Within a few minutes sir, but we won't have an accurate count until this clutter clears and we can get clear readings from our sensors", some of the forward elements may have had their comms arrays taken out" an officer replied

"Very well then" the General said. Looking at the hologram, Septimus realised just how vulnerable they would be to a follow up strike in this environment if the hoomen's sensors were good enough to sort through this mess faster then his ships', they could probably get in a few volleys from their main guns before his fleet could react, of course this time he wouldn't launch a feint with frigates. This time he'd overwhelm them with numbers and crush them, a thought that caused Septimus to form the Turian equivalent of a grin.

"General, radiation appears to be clearing" the sensor operator said

"Alert all vessels to prepare to move in" the General replied, it was time to end this threat before the rest of the enemy responded and he would not be caught like this again.

**Author's Notes**

Well here's the latest chapter, I took some of the feedback about the last battle into account and comments about the quality of this battle compared to the last would be appreciated. As to review responses.

Hang Tuah: Yes the Turians reason seemed kind of ridiculous when I wrote it however there is a reason for this. The Turian excuse is just that, an excuse, similar to how the people say that WMDs was just the official reason the US invaded Iraq. Although when you consider what happened with the Krogan you could say that they have a precedent, although it's not a very good comparison.

M4 Sherman: Your battle fleet has just been reduced from over eighty top of the line warships, to two outdated battlestars and a Valkyrie, even if you were feeling confident before hand wouldn't you feel even the slightest hint of doubt in that situation.

Genesis: One of the things I've always thought about the fall of the Colonies was that there probably were more then a few ships that were resistant to the Cylon's cyber warfare, but they were destroyed by the Cylon's surprise attacks. Galactica itself would have been destroyed if they hadn't had any ammo for their mk2 vipers aboard and Pegasus was pretty much on the chopping block before Cain ordered a highly risky blind jump.

Anyway, as always read, enjoy and please review.


	8. Chapter 8

**Battlestar Leviathan, Docked At Ragnar Anchorage, Loading Munitions**

The CIC was surprisingly empty for a battlestar preparing to enter combat, but with manpower in short supply everyone who could pull a cart or carry ammunition was working on the station. As he scanned through the list of crew members being transferred over from Galactica to what he had found himself referring to as his ship now, Vex asked Bulldog "Major, what's the status of the munitions transfer"

Standing on the other side of the table reading over his own chart, Bulldog replied "The starboard magazines are all being loaded first, that should take us another hour and the remainder should be done in another three. However sir their appears to be a small problem"

Looking up from the list Vex asked "What problem Major"

"Well since the heavy spinals are unique to the Mercuries like Leviathan they would never have stored that many here in the first place, but it seems that the last time they restocked this place they may have overlooked a few of the big ones we need for our bow guns"

"What?" Vex replied "how many rounds do we have"

"Twelve"

"Frak" Vex said as he banged his hand on the table. Neither Galactica, nor Leviathan had any nukes aboard and while they had found a few warheads on the station, he'd been hoping to try and pick up the slack with the eight bow guns that ran along Leviathan's spine. The entire ship had to be pointed towards the target to aim them, but the rounds they fired were about four times the size of a standard heavy cannon shell and whatever they hit generally died moments later in a spectacular series of secondary explosions.

"Alright, is anything else missing from the station magazines" Vex asked

"A few things, but there's still more then enough to fill our mags and Galactica's" Bulldog snorted then said "I bet it was that frakker over in Galactica's brig that made off with the smaller rounds"

"Probably, lot of groups on Sagittaron would pay good cubits for those warheads" the Commander replied. Sagittaron had been viewed, rightfully so in many ways, as having been exploited by the rest of the colonies for years and not many people had been surprised when the terrorists started popping up. Initially they'd been seen as a fringe threat by the federal government and the fleet though until one, Zac something, blew up a government building on Sagittaron. That had brought the fleet in with MPs and marines and the man, Zair maybe, had soon found himself in a nice prison cell.

"Okay, next thing is our vipers, I'm thinking we should slot in Apollo as our CAG"

"Weren't you thinking of bringing Thrace over?"

"Yes, until I realised that Lee has had a few more hours with our crew and has spent virtually no time on Galactica, while Starbuck has been in Galactica's brig since the start of her cruise," Bulldog said with a grin, the amount of time Starbuck had spent in the brig was quickly becoming a running joke on Galactica "Plus Starbuck's popular over on the old girl and Galactica's pilots will be more willing to take orders from someone they know then a complete stranger"

"Okay then I'll clear it with the Admiral, then I'll head over to the station see if we can't get the loading done any faster" Vex said as he scribbled a small note. Like most of the men and women on his ship he was looking forward to getting into combat, almost everyone on board was sure that they had lost friends over Picon and the desire for vengeance was obvious. Vex's grandfather had been a man deeply rooted in the old Tauron traditions and one thing the old man had once told his only grandson was that all death demanded vengeance, blood was to be repaid in blood and only then would the dead find their rest.

One of the things they had been taught in command school was the value of stirring up a crews anger before battle and while Adrian knew that motivation wasn't a sure fire way to win the Leviathan's crew was probably motivated enough right now to try and storm Olympus. A debt was owed and as far as the Leviathan's crew was concerned, it would be repaid.

**Turian Dreadnought Palveran, Over Picon, Ten Minutes Later**

The radiation was finally clearing, revealing the scrap yard on sensors in all its glory and that was what worried Septimus, the three vessels that had been moments before been firing at his fleet were gone. Twelve of his ships, mostly frigates and light cruisers, had been completely destroyed by the nuclear strike and more then double that number had suffered varying amounts of damage, ranging from scorched paint to major hull breaches and main gun damage.

"Communications, order all ships to watch out for enemy reinforcements, they may have fallen back and regrouped with additional ships"

"Yes sir"

"Ah sir" one of the bridge guards asked from his position behind him "Where would these ships come from, they have no mass effect drives, so no faster then light travel"

"Just because they don't have mass effect drives it doesn't mean that they don't have FTL, how would they have reached the relay then, do you think that they used sleeper ships? There's also the possibility that they are hiding behind the planet, using it for cover" Septimus replied, if he had been a crew member he probably would have shouted him down, but the soldier was young and his tone had been more questioning for knowledge's sake then questioning whether his superior was correct and Septimus had learned long ago that insulting a crew member's lack of knowledge in a fairly specialised field tended to do more harm then good for both morale his reputation among his subordinates.

"Ah yes, thank you sir"

Septimus turned back to the display. Of course the question was, if they didn't have mass effect based FTL, what kind of faster then light travel did they utilise. He had read a few of his people's old pre spaceflight science fiction tales, and an Asari novel once, and they all featured a wide variety of FTL travel methods. One had amusingly featured several of the prominent fictional FTLs existing side by side and the author had spent much of the story examining the benefits and problems that arose from such a setting. Of course it might not even be one of those, it could be something no one he knew could conceive.

"Order the fleet to reform into a half sphere formation, with us in the centre" Septimus ordered

Of course they might not even have FTL, they could have equipped their ships with some kind of near light travel, it wouldn't be as efficient but considering the close proximity of their worlds, it probably wouldn't present that much of a problem. They might have discovered the relay with a probe and then dispatched a near-light capable ship with its crew frozen in cryogenic suspension to investigate.

Then Spetimus mentally berated himself and reminded himself that the more relevant question at the moment was '_where did those ships go'._ They could have escaped while their sensors were blind, although on the other hand they could be…

"Order all vessels to target those vessels in orbit, start on the left and move across, I want every single one destroyed" Septimus ordered

"Yes sir" the communications officer replied

"_All crew stand by for firing"_

The ship shook slightly, and on the sensor display, Septimus watched as his entire fleet began firing at the unmanned vessels in orbit of the planet. None of them tried to evade, but if he was correct three of them would begin moving any moment now, of course though if he was incorrect then he was still denying the enemy a large number of potential warships, a win-win for him. Flotillas were operating together to bombard the targets and every few seconds a vessel would break apart or explode under the hail of mass accelerator fire.

"There they are" Septimus whispered to himself as two contacts on the sensors began moving. They had been hiding behind the scrap heaps, probably waiting for his ships to move in. The third, smaller vessel wasn't on display but it had taken quite the beating before, perhaps it had retreated, or been destroyed?

"Order all fleet ships to target the two moving vessels from this range and have everyone be ready to dodge incoming enemy fire" Septimus ordered

The main display changed again to show the fleet firing at their two enemies, who swung ninety degrees to present a broadside to the Turians, while their single ships began launching from the from their launch bays beneath the hanger modules that were positioned on the flanks of both ships.

Pointing at two groups of frigates in the second line of the Turian formation, Septimus "Move these units forward to defend against enemy missile strikes, focus on single ships that get close but any missile launches are to take priority"

As the frigates moved up a salvo of rounds caught one of the enemy ships around the middle, the ship shuddered then snapped in half, under a second series of hits, one down one to go.

"Sir, we are reading some kind of sensor distortion to our rear" the Turian manning sensors stared intently at his console for a moment then screamed "CONTACT, six, no seven vessels of similar size to those engaging us, within our main guns accurate fire range but to far out for our lasers. More enemy ships are appearing by the moment sir, now at twenty eight"

"Break off a flotilla to engage the last remaining ship" Septimus roared "Then swing the fleet around to meet this new force, as soon as we are positioned fire off a burst from our main guns followed by a volley of torpedoes"

"Sir, the first ship has just disappeared"

"Then direct the entire fleet to engage these newcomers, all ships are to begin firing and not stop until I order them too" the General ordered with a snarl, he would teach these people for their defiance and crush them under the boot of his fleet.

**Battlestar Pegasus, Approaching Picon, That Same Time**

"Sir, our point guns have established their solutions and begun firing" Lieutenant Jack Fisk, the tactical officer, reported

"Admiral, we just received a report from Chimera, Victory and Olympia have been destroyed and Neros was forced to bug out with heavy damage, he also said that an unknown number of our disabled ships were destroyed" Lieutenant Hoshi, Pegasus's communications officer said

"Thank you Mister Hoshi, send to all ships, launch our planes and standby for simultaneous attack, all weapons" Helena Cain, commanding officer of Pegasus, a Mercury class battlestar, and the fleet approaching Picon, replied. It wasn't quite the decisive crossfire Neros had planned in his hasty transmission but the Admiral had to give the man credit, the enemy had their asses her task force and their necks on the chopping block. The only problem Cain had foreseen with the plan was that there might be some kind of leadership struggle when the ships began jumping in on short notice but the only other flag officer to arrive, Rear Admiral Xander on the Battlestar Hephaestus, had deferred command to her.

It was a shame about Victory though, Cain had known the ship's Commander, Jack Evans, for several years before she became a flag officer and while he wasn't the best outside the box thinker, the man had easily been one of her most dependable subordinates, one she could rely on to complete most instructions to the letter, a razor.

"Admiral, all ships report ready for attack" Colonel Belzen, Cain's executive officer, said

"Standby Colonel" Cain replied "Mister Hoshi, what's the status of our squadrons"

"All Vipers and Raptors are in the air Admiral, all the raptors are carrying their full nuclear strike packages" Hoshi replied

Cain thought for a moment. All the nukes she was able to get her hands on were currently either in their launch tubes on the battlestars, or slung under the wings of her planes, in all likelihood they would only get one shot at this attack and if the aliens decided to finish off the large portion of the fleet over Picon then the Colonies' stock of nuclear weapons would probably start drop to dangerously low levels. The only remaining stockpiles of nukes she knew of were the remaining warheads that they had been unable to load aboard Pegasus at the Scorpion fleet yards before the jump here and the small caches scattered around the colonies at ammunition depots.

"Fire a single volley with our guns first, then follow up with a full barrage, cannons and nukes and then finish up with our planes" Cain ordered, a second later the deck beneath her feet shook as the Pegasus's massive bow guns opened up. Looking up at the DRADIS screen Cain saw the readouts showing the rest of the fleet following suit, at the same time though the enemy fleet had reversed their positions with a speed that surprised her and were returning fire, a few small and slow projectiles launched towards the humans, which the DRADIS identified as missiles, but they were snuffed out a few moments after launching by the bullet wall the Colonial ships were producing.

"20 seconds to our shot's impact, the enemy's will hit us in eight" Hoshi said

"Mr Hoshi order all ships to go hot now, warn all our birds to stay out of our firing solution, Lieutenant Fisk as soon as you have control of the tubes you are to fire" Cain ordered before she pulled a chain from around her neck, on the chain was a locket, her dog tags and a key, the key to activate the Pegasus's main nuclear missile tubes.

"Colonel Belzen?" Cain asked, the Colonel already had his own key out and in its slot on the other side of the DRADIS console

"On three" the XO replied "One, Two, Three"

The two officers turned the keys together and Fisk reported "I have control of our tubes Admiral, firing now"

Looking up at the DRADIS display, Cain watched as the approaching alien shells were overlapped in their last moments of flight by a virtual wall of missiles and shells from her own fleet. The Pegasus shook once and then again, though the second was not the result of any kind of weapons impact on the ship.

"Report" Cain ordered

"We took a glancing hit, vipers are saying that there's a big chunk missing from our upper head" Colonel Belzen replied "Other ships are reporting similar damage, but five battlestars and three escorts have been completely destroyed"

Cain nodded then ordered "Commit all our main squadrons, launch reserves to provide close in defence"

"Pegasus to all ships, commit all attack squadrons and launch reserves" Hoshi said into his headset

On the DRADIS, the swarm of fighter symbols that surrounded the larger battlestar icons began heading for the enemy fleet, at the same time another enemy salvo reached its targets and three more battlestars went up.

"Admiral we can't keep this up" Belzen said

"I know Jurgen" Cain replied, never looking away from the DRADIS display "But let's see how this plays for a bit longer. Mister Hoshi tell the fleet to start spinning up their FTL drives, they are to jump to Caprica orbit on my order"

"Yes sir"

While she gave those orders the DRADIS screen changed to show the destruction of another two battlestars and symbols representing her fleet's missile attack began to disappear at a rapid pace, probably the laser defence system and those enemy fighters, but the shells struck home and a second after them the remaining nukes. Pegasus's view of the enemy force was distorted by radiation and heat.

"Mr Hoshi, tell our raptors that if they can't get a clean lock use line of sight to fire their missiles, once they've released their orders are to jump out, we'll need all our deck space to recover vipers" the Admiral ordered

The Pegasus shook again and the DRADIS console showed the destruction of yet another four ships, Cain shook her head, they couldn't keep bleeding battlestars like this.

"We just lost the lower starboard flight pod" Jurgen reported

"The frakkers also managed to wipe out a few of our defensive guns, I'm reconfiguring the other's fire patterns to compensate" Fisk shouted

There was another series of blooms on DRADIS, the squadrons had engaged.

**Major Cole "Stinger" Taylor, Leading Pegasus Blue Squadron, That Same Time**

Opening his eyes Pegasus's air group commander watched the bright flashes of the raptor's nuclear strike subside. Gunning his afterburners and with his squadron behind him Stinger pointed his fighter towards one of the alien fighters. This was the slightly more dangerous part of their mission, enemy fighters were about, though they appeared to have taken heavy losses, those laser defences had already snuffed out enough planes for Stinger to be wary of them and according to a raptor wrangler who had just jumped out there were a few rounds from the colonial's defence guns slipping past the larger alien warships.

"Okay people let's do this" Stinger broadcasted to the squadron "One pass then break off and attack targets of opportunity"

Putting his viper into a dive and lining up his target, Stinger pressed his thumb down on his firing stud and held it down for almost thirty seconds as he raced towards the silver hull of the alien ship. The ship's shields flared blue as his squadron all rained fire upon it until they seemed to fizzle and pop and while only a few of his shots hit the ship's hull as he broke off his attack there was a bright flash behind him, not the detonation of another nuke but the destruction of the alien vessel. As he let a grin spread across his face at the thought of being able to paint the silhouette of a major warship on his viper Stinger saw a pair of vipers, followed by trio of enemy fighters blur past his cockpit.

"Sniper, Stinger I've got eyes on bogeys chasing friendlies can you lend me a hand" Stinger transmitted as he swung his viper around to chase the enemy planes

"Stinger, Lightning, Sniper bought a laser during our run, I've got your back" Sera "Lightning" Ferris replied

"Roger Lightning, lets go make ace" Stinger said, Sniper had been a good fiend but at least they'd nailed the ship that killed him. He'd thought that the firing solution of a battlestar in full defensive mode was scary but at least you could see a battlestar's firing solution but those lasers were damn effective and you had no sign that your bird was about to die until it was disintegrating around you.

Patching himself through to the vipers being chased by the alien fighters, that his system identified as Smash Down and Brick off the battlestar Charon, Stinger said "Smash Down this is Stinger and my plus one, we're pulling up behind you and want to try a swing shot, how copy"

"Copy Stinger, we'll wait for your move, but be damn quick about it I can't dodge forever" Smash Down, whose voice identified her as a woman. The swing shot was a tactic that had been around since the early days of military spaceflight, Stinger and Lightning would start firing on the alien fighters and when they tried to break off Smash Down and Brick would swing their vipers around and counter attack, catching the enemy fighters in a crossfire with superior numbers, which would be vital if those fighters had shields on them as well.

"Lightning, Stinger take the one on the right" stinger ordered as he lined up his shot on the left fighter

"Roger, Stinger taking my shot" Sera replied, barely contained glee in her voice

Pressing his thumb down on his firing stud again, Stinger watched as bright tracer rounds raced from his guns and slammed into his target, as he expected the rounds just hit the blue shimmer of the fighter's shields but also as expected the enemy fighter began to veer away from Brick to get out of his line of fire and when Brick swung his viper around and targeted the alien fighter, the hunter quickly found himself the prey.

"You can have that one Stinger, I already got one for myself on the way in" Brick said as his fighter blew through the rapidly parting debris of the alien fighter

"Thanks Brick" Stinger replied "Lightning, how're you doing"

When he received no reply he tried again "Lightning, you copy. Brick can you raise her"

"Nope, can't get Smash Down either" Stinger's new wingman replied

"Frak, watch out for that fighter then" Stinger said as he turned his viper around, if the other two pilots were dead then it was highly likely that the alien was alive.

"Stinger I got one, pulling in behind you" Brick nearly screamed "Frak he's firing"

Stinger tried to pull his viper out of its turn but it was too late, there was a thump in his right wing and suddenly he had alarms and warnings going off all over his cockpit.

"Nail that frakker Brick, I'm punching out" Stinger ordered as he reached between his legs to grab his ejection seat trigger, he pulled it and with a bang he shot out of his beloved viper. He felt his whole body being pulled into the cushioned seat by the gee forces, then the counter thrusters in the top of the chair fired and Stinger felt his body float out of the seat about a millimetre before the seat's straps stopped him in his tracks.

"Brick, Stinger did you get him" Stinger asked using the seats in built transmitter, all he got in return was silence.

"Brick, don't tell me you bought it too"

Of course, Stinger reasoned it was entirely possible that Brick had chased his prey out of range, the ejection seat radio was supposed to be used for communicating with a rescue team that had picked up the long range locator beacon and just needed a specific fix when they were close. Then he noticed what looked like small, blue grey darts racing towards the fleet, Stinger thought for a second that they might be missiles but they were staying well out of the fleet's firing solution and he saw no sign of the battlestars shifting fire to intercept them. Then as the battlestars began disappearing in a series of bright flashes, Stinger felt an icy ball being to form in his stomach, the fleet was retreating and he was stuck here in his ejection seat. He felt like screaming at the universe, he was either gonna use up all his air and choke or end up a frakking POW.

**A/N**

Well here's the latest chapter, it probably would have been up sooner but my first term of year 11 has taken up a lot more time then I thought. None the less I shall endeavor to get the next chapter up ASAP.

And as always please read and review, every email I have in my inbox telling me I have a new review is a reminder to be writing the next chapter.


	9. Chapter 9

**Battlestar Galactica, Leaving Ragnar Anchorage, 30 Minutes Later**

The Galactica's newly minted CAG had just returned from checking on the refurbished mk2 vipers and was entering CIC to recall Galactica's CAP in preparation for the jump to the rendezvous when she heard it.

"This is the biggest frakking piece of shit I've seen since the armistice Bill" the unmistakable voice of Colonel Tigh shouted

"I know Saul" the much softer voice of the Admiral replied

The Admiral and the Colonel were standing by the plotting table under the DRADIS console and Starbuck would have put money on the possibility that whatever had been stupid enough to earn the XO's ire was probably described on the piece of paper he held so tightly his knuckles had turned white.

Saluting she asked "Sirs, whats going on?"

Handing her the paper Tigh replied with a small smile "Take a look, the politicians are back on top of my shit list, number two"

**TO ALL COLONIAL MILITARY UNITS**

**COLONIAL FORCES IN ****ALL THEATRES**** ARE TO RETURN TO HOME PORTS. SHIPS BASED OVER PICON ARE TO MAKE FOR SCORPIA. AND PREPARE TO OFFER BEST DEFENSE.**

**COUNTER ATTACK AT PICON HAS FAILED. 18 SHIPS LOST.**

**CHIEF EXECUTIVE IS ASSUMING COMMAND OF THE FLEET AND ORDERING A REPLOYMENT FOR DFENSIVE OPERATIONS. ALL OFFENSIVE OPERATIONS ARE HEREBY CANCELLED.**

**CHIEF EXECUTIVE HAS BEEN ADVISED TO ****OFFER SURRENDER**

**CENTGOV SENDS**

Placing the paper on the table Starbuck asked her superiors "They can't be thinking of surrendering, this is what, day two"

"We lost most of the fleet during the first few minutes at Picon" Adama told her "the message says we lost eighteen in the counterattack but it doesn't say anything about damage to the ships that got out, if the public knew how bad this was they'd probably be panicking"

"The quorum's got a few members who're made of sterner stuff then most but I bet some civie in the know is getting ready to clean an alien's flag pole" Tigh growled, the Colonel hated civilians interfering in military affairs but one thing he hated even more was the idea surrender.

"Then what are we gonna do Admiral" Starbuck asked

Adama grimaced "We're going to meet up with our battlegroup here then going to fall back to Caprica. Nagala pulled ships from their defence fleet for Picon and this counter attack probably used up even more, we'll be sorely needed. From there we'll see what hopefully we'll manage to work out a defence before"

Tapping the Admiral on the shoulder and handing him two sheets of paper Lieutenant Dualla said "New orders sir, Boomer's Raptor just picked them up they're from Vice Admiral Cain"

Bill took the message but didn't respond. Vice Admiral Cain was probably Helena Cain, the commander of the battlestar Pegasus, but he'd thought that she was a rear admiral. In fact he was positive she had been, Adama remembered the scuttlebutt, mostly about her supposed political connections, in the wake of her promotion to command of Battlestar Group Sixty Two, over about a dozen other commanders who were considered favourites.

Of course with all the losses the fleet had taken over the last two days he really shouldn't have been surprised that some people had received promotions. The Colonial Fleet's upper command structure currently had three full Admirals at the top of the chain, twelve vice admirals below that and a few dozen rear admirals below that. Bill knew that one of the fleet Admirals, Nagala, had been leading the fleet at Picon, Admiral Corman managed strategic planning and didn't command a ship so he might have been helping marines dig in at fleet HQ on Picon at that very moment and the final one, Minos, commanded the battlestar Kobol and the extra solar fleet units so he might have been at Picon with Nagala, leading the counterattack or he might have been in another solar system, organising defences at the deep space anchorages. Considering the fact that all the fleet admirals may have been killed it really wasn't a surprise at all that someone like Cain had been bumped up a rank.

Grabbing his reading glasses off the plotting table Adama turned his attention to his new orders.

**TO HUSKER, COMMANDING OFFICER BSG-75**

**DUE TO COMBAT LOSSES YOU ARE HEREBY ****PROMOTED**** TO THE RANK OF ****VICE ADMIRAL**** AND GIVEN COMMAND OF THE DEFENSE OF ****CAPRICA, GEMENON AND TAURON AND THE COLONIAL 2ND FLEET****. GREATER DETAILS OF COMMAND WILL BE RELAYED UPON YOUR REPLY TO THIS MESSAGE.**

**UPON RETURN TO CAPRICA YOU ARE TO ATTEND A 1340 MEETING AT YOUR HEADQUATERS FURTHER DIRECTION WILL BE GIVEN UPON ARRIVAL.**

**KNIFE EDGE SENDS**

The fleet's losses in terms of Admirals must have been a lot worse then he thought if they were bumping him up to Vice Admiral as well and sending him to command 2nd fleet. In peace time it was considered a premier post, the three worlds under it's protection were home to a great deal of the Colonies' economic and political power and most of its commanders spent more time in Caprica City wining and dining with the politicians then in the impressive _Olympus_ space station that served as the fleet's headquarters. And the second part of the message caused the Admiral's mind to wander back several weeks to a very similar message he had received aboard Valkyrie that had ended with a visit to fleet HQ on Picon and a little trip to the Armistice Line.

Of course if he received similar orders to last time and they discovered another alien artefact maybe they'd find something that would let them shoot down any enemy advances from Picon.

**Turian Dreadnought Palveran, Over Picon, 6 Hours Later**

The war in space was, for the moment, over and the battle for this rock had now moved to a ground operation.

To coordinate the invasion of the planet Septimus had moved to the Palveran's briefing room, he had found in the past that the larger hologram helped him get a better perspective of his force's progress and so far they were progressing well. Although he didn't have enough troops at his command currently to carry out an effective, by the book, occupation of the planet he did have enough to take the three largest cities and to establish a few dozen staging bases the countryside, in case any locals forgot that this planet belonged to the Turian Hierarchy now even if they didn't see a patrol on every street everyday.

The initial landings had been unopposed which was a combination of them landing far from any population centres and then advancing on foot and an orbital bombardment of any identified military bases on the main continent.

"General" the intercom squawked, the hologram above the speaker identified the voice as belonging to Commander Narek Piver, the leader of the ground assault on the city intelligence had indentified as Queenstown, the planets capital.

"Go ahead" the General said

"My forward elements have run into heavy enemy resistance near the city centre, I'd like to request a bombard across the following coordinates"

The hologram automatically shifted to a topographic map that had had an orbital photograph laid across it and it had the projected damage from the orbital bombardment highlighted in red, Piver wanted everything across a forty kilometre long and five deep area bombarded.

Septimus instructed the hologram to show him the known enemy positions, the blue icons that appeared ran in a thin, slightly crooked line for about thirty kilometres, Piver's requested bombardment would devastate that defence and everything behind it.

"Have you found any evidence that the hoomens are attempting to evacuate civilians" Septimus asked. Although his species normally preferred a "Shock and Awe" approach to warfare, by bombing nearly any threat that moved into the open, the General hoped to avoid harming too many civilians until he could get an idea of the hoomen's response to such an action. Some species would react to it by laying down their arms to avoid further non combatant deaths but when used on others it would drive even more sentients into resisting his troops and until he could confirm that reinforcements were on the way he'd prefer not risk sparking a guerrilla campaign.

"Yes, I have had men storm several homes behind our front line and we found that most of them were occupied but my forward scouts are reporting that unarmed and non uniformed hoomens are being loaded into large ground vehicles, it is my belief that we merely took our current holdings before evacuation forces arrived"

"Very well then, have your infantry dig in for now and we'll wait a few hours" Septimus ordered

"But sir I'd rather hit the enemy before they have a chance to properly dig in or bring up enough troops for a local counter attack" Piver replied

"If they throw all their available men and equipment into a defence then we will destroy it in a heavy bombardment and you and your men will be able to advance unopposed and if they try to launch an attack I will personally order the fleet to bombard their lines into rubble and our superior technology will allow you to repel what elements survive"

"Very well then sir, I'll start organising my troops" Piver said before signing off

With the conversation concluded Septimus turned the hologram to a view of a mechanised infantry company that were closing in on what had been a major military base on the planet.

**Colonial Fleet Headquarters, Picon, That Same Time**

What had once been a micro city of barracks, hangers, vehicle depots and armouries centred around one of the largest spaceport complexes on Picon was now a network of craters, fires, hastily erected prefabs and hundreds of men and women tending to all kinds of damage and casualties.

And amongst the chaos of what had once been fleet headquarters, a young boy called Jack Harper found himself trying to inject a syringe into a rapidly convulsing and screaming woman in a pilot's uniform.

"Frak it, get the damn tranqs into her" the woman who'd drafted Jack into her little operation, shouted as she readied a tray of surgical tools. He'd just been standing around, not sure what to do following the bombardment when she had dragged him into one of the few remaining buildings that the medics had set up as a kind of hospital

"I'm trying" Jack replied as he tried to make sure that he hit the vein she had told him to stab into and not something that would make the flyer's condition worse "Do you even know what you're doing, you don't exactly look like a doctor"

"Well technically I'm not, I'm studying at the Asclepius Institute in Queenstown I just come out here to visit my father" she replied before asking "Have you got that tranq in yet"

"Almost" Jack replied just before he finally managed to pin the pilot down for a moment, Jack moved quickly and jabbed the syringe into her neck and within seconds the patient's shaking had become noticeably less violent. So the sedative was either working or she was dying

"Try to hold still" Jack said and the pilot nodded weakly in reply as her eyes slowly closed

"Her eyes are closing is that a problem" he asked

"No that's just the tranq kicking in" the woman replied as she grabbed a pair of scissors and began cutting through the pilot's flight suit and the tank top underneath. Jack had seen breasts before but normally he'd try to look away if a girl suddenly found herself without her shirt, in this situation though he didn't really notice because of all the blood on her torso. The dark red liquid had been pooling inside the flight suit and now that the garment had been pulled to the side it flowed out and onto the two people trying to aide her.

It looked like she had three major wounds, two on her chest and one on left stomach

"Okay what do I do now" Jack asked

"Take this and press on that big wound on her stomach, you need to apply pressure to stem the bleeding for a few minutes" the woman replied as she injected another syringe, this time into the pilot's arm and handed jack a rag

"What's that" Jack asked and nodded at the syringe

"Coagulant, causes the blood to form clots faster which should help stem the bleeding a bit" the woman said as she began wrapping a bandage around a cut on the pilot's forearm that had been covered with quick-seal paste. Quick seal was like plaster for injuries, it went on as a wet blob and a bandage was wrapped around it, the tight bandage forced the paste deep into the wound which helped stop blood from escaping and when it was time to remove it the bandage was just pulled off, most of the blob of paste went with it and whatever remained was easily wiped away, whatever it was made out of didn't hurt the body and it was coated with a kind of disinfectant.

As Jack pressed the rapidly darkening rag onto the wound on the pilot's chest a man in blood splattered marine combat gear, with a name tag that said Maj. Theseus, came over to them and asked "Karen, we're evacuating the wounded to a hospital on the mainland, can she be moved?"

"Maybe, we'd need to keep her from bleeding out on the way and we'd need to get her properly checked out as soon as we arrived. Most of her wounds are skin deep but there's something metallic lodged just above her vagina, probably piercing intestine and I'm concerned about damage from the shockwave" the woman, Karen, replied

"Okay then, grab some bandages and go help Sam move his patient, we'll meet you outside" Theseus said as he grabbed another bandage and wound it around another wound covered in quick-seal and he said to Jack "Help me move this gurney outside, try to keep pressure on that wound as we go"

"Got it" Jack replied as he moved one hand from the rag to the rail around the edge of the gurney.

"And just slide it off the table here, the wheels pop out automatically" Theseus said and just as he said the gurney's wheels snapped into place as they slide it off the table it had been placed on.

Jack was afraid of losing his position pressing on the pilot's wound and tried to move slowly but surely, whereas Theseus was more concerned with getting her onto the truck and away from Fleet HQ before the aliens showed up. The marine platoon that had run into the enemy force had reported that the aliens were mostly vehicle mounted and advancing cautiously along a road that lead from their main landing area near Queenstown to the small village of Picis which was home to the bridge that ran from Picon's main continent to the island that Fleet HQ was built into. Colonel Maris, the highest ranking marine remaining at the HQ had sent the few hundred men he had available along with a few tanks, artillery pieces and any volunteers he could muster to Picis to try and halt the enemy there. But if the fleet battle was any indication the aliens would probably overrun them in short or and once the enemy held Picis there would be no leaving Fleet HQ.

"Okay Son just lift her up here, the wheels retract as you slide the gurney onto the tray" Theseus said as they reached the truck

"Got it sir" Jack replied as they lifted up the gurney

As the two of them got up into the truck's rear compartment next to their patient Karen came running towards them, carrying to large medical kits, there was no room in the back though so she ran around to the front of the vehicle and jumped in between the driver and a marine. With the vehicle full the truck started up and fell in behind another truck, whose rear tray had been removed and replaced with a large artillery cannon.

They stayed behind the gun until they reached Picis were it parked behind a building that was filled with marines setting up sniper rifles in the windows, not just regular sniper rifles though, the marines were assembling updated Apollo rifles, an anti-tank rifle that had been issued during the Cylon war to kill the toughest Cylon ground units. When it hit a person it typically left behind a smear and until the marines had heard about what the aliens had done to the fleet only a few of them had considered using Apollos, let alone the latest versions stocked at fleet HQ, against enemy infantry.

The truck carrying Jack, Theseus and Karen was far enough away from Picis that by the time the aliens arrived they couldn't see the fighting but they certainly heard the cracks of rifles, booms of artillery and the colossal roar of the orbital bombardment that ended the battle almost a minute after it began.

**Onboard A Stealth Raider, In Orbit Of Picon, That Same Time**

The One called Cavil laughed, nearly cackled as the humans were thoroughly whipped all across the planet, the aliens had swept away their fleet with a speed that even his people would have struggled and were bombing them with an efficiency he envied. Unfortunately though it was time to leave, his ship had been designed to fool colonial DRADIS and the alien's sensors were still an unknown quantity rather not test. He left his chair in the main cabin and sat down in the cockpit, the stealth raiders were heavily automated but they were home to AIs that still carried some of the extreme aggression of their fighter brethren and slipping in and out of Colonial detection grids was often a game of patience and restraint.

As he accessed the ship's flight controls Cavil was surprised to see that he was locked out, he queried the ship and found that it had been ordered to lock him out and initiate a self destruct. A suddenly worried Cavil, all of his elation evaporated, asked who had given the orders but before he received a reply he felt an immense stabbing pain in his chest, immense heat and burning all across his body then suddenly he was immersed in a thick, cold goo.

Cavil raised himself up, out of the tank he was in to take a breath to find two centurions and another One, like himself standing over him he also discovered that he had been handcuffed to the sides of the tank.

"Brother I like your style" the One said "But you are in serious trouble"

**Turian Cruiser Renix, En Route to Citadel Shipyards, One Hour Later**

"Captain Vakarian, we just hooked up to a comm buoy and the council wants to speak to you, do you want me to have them out through to your cabin" Vakarian's XO told him over the ship comm.

"Yes, thank you commander" Haren replied, of course the council wanted to speak to him, they couldn't wait for him to reach the Citadel to chew out the lowly subordinate they could get there hands on rather then the superior officer who was at this moments running off and kicking over alien governments over laws they'd probably never even heard of.

"The council, the three heads of Citadel space yes?" Doctor, a title hoomans apparently gave to their scientists, Baltar asked, they'd been in the middle of another of their discussions when Haren had received the message.

"Yes, that's right" Vakarian replied. They'd recently turned away from the basics of the galaxy and into a more in depth look of different species, from the perceived notions about the Salarians knowing everything everywhere, to the Turian system of government.

Haren had found it interesting to meet someone who after hearing his description of the Quarians had expressed outrage at the fact that the rest of the Galaxy had just cut them adrift, it probably came from their shared histories regarding artificial intelligences, the Quarians were a species that had developed a series of robotic workers, that they had called the Geth, that had eventually gained sentience and rebelled against them, driving them from their worlds and forcing them to live aboard star ships and always wear personal environment suits after their immune systems deteriorated in the sterile environment. But that was the price for violating perfectly reasonable Council edicts.

"Well then I suppose I you should get going, answer about this lovely state of affairs" the translator currently didn't carry hoomen sarcasm that well but Haren had become accustomed to the Doctor's various voice tones.

"Yes I should" Vakrian replied as he opened the door "Guard, please return the Doctor to the hanger"

As Haren made his way to his cabin his wondered what would make three of the most powerful people in the galaxy want to speak to him. He had expected a thorough debriefing by a representative of the council, maybe the Turian ambassador to the Citadel but not the Council themselves.

As he sat down at his private computer in his cabin, Haren was quickly becoming so nervous he thought he might not be able to speak but he managed to say without any indication of his fear "Accept incoming link".


End file.
